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-From  The  New  YorTc  Tribune 
NO    EUROPEAN    ENTANGLEMENTS" 


THE  IRISH  CASE 

Before  the  Court  of 
Public  Opinion 


BY 

P.  WHITWELL  WILSON 

Special  Correspondent  of 
The  London  Daily  News 


^-  -H^uL,  Mass. 

New  York  Chicago 

Fleming   H.    Revell   Company 

London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1920  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


41 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:     100    Princes    Street 


FOREWORD 

THIS  book  has  been  written  at  the 
urgent  request  of  numerous  Ameri- 
can Citizens  who  have  heard  me 
speak  upon  Ireland.  Numbers  of  these  Ameri- 
can Citizens  tell  me  that  they  want  to  know 
the  facts  about  Ireland  but  do  not  know  where 
to  find  them.  And  they  ask  me  why  I  do  not 
write  the  facts  for  the  press  in  the  United 
States.  I  tell  them  that  I  was  asked  to  do  this 
by  a  leading  agency  and  that  in  response  I 
supplied  the  material,  with  figures  and  statis- 
tics. The  agency  circulated  the  articles,  and  if 
only  a  few  journals  printed  what  I  had  to  say, 
I  can  scarcely  be  blamed  for  that! 

I  happened  to  call  on  an  editor  and  saw  my 
work  reposing  in  his  waste  paper  basket.  We 
had  a  hearty  laugh  over  the  matter  and  he 
explained  to  me  that  the  best  plan  at  these 
poHtical  seasons  is  to  leave  the  Irish  severely 
alone.  The  whole  business  was  simply  politics 
3 


4  FOREWORD 

and  the  less  said  about  it  the  better.  I  am 
sure  that  my  friend  was  wholly  sincere  in  his 
desire  for  good  relations  between  his  country 
and  mine,  but  of  course  his  theory  means 
in  effect  that  much  may  be  said  against 
Britain  without  being  answered.  To  give  my 
editorial  friend  his  due,  I  must  add  that  his 
practice  has  been  often  broader  minded  than 
his  preaching.  But  the  Ulster  Deputation, 
when  over  here,  left  with  a  sense  that  they  had 
not  been  given  a  full  hearing  in  print.  I  do 
not  know  whether  they  were  right  or  wrong. 
One  New  York  daily  gave  them  a  good  half 
page  in  the  Sunday  Edition  and  there  were 
doubtless  others.  But  their  general  complaint 
is  on  record.  On  the  other  hand,  I  have  just 
had  in  my  office  a  Sinn  Feiner,  a  most  delight- 
ful personal  friend,  who  says  that  the  news- 
papers are  very  unfair  to  De  Valera,  men- 
tioning him  as  little  as  possible !  He  felt  this 
to  be  a  distinct  grievance. 

One  little  incident  may  perhaps  be  worth  re- 
calling. During  the  War,  the  American 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  issued  a  book  or  pamphlet  for  the 
American  Army  telling  the  troops  what  had 


FOREWORD  5 

been  accomplished  by  the  British  Forces.  The 
object  was,  I  take  it,  to  help  the  soldiers  to 
realise  the  situation  in  Britain  where  many  of 
them  would  be  stationed.  In  crossing  the  At- 
lantic in  a  boat  full  of  "Y"  workers,  I  was 
asked  to  give  addresses  on  the  same  lines,  as 
few  of  these  crusaders  had  ever  seen  Europe. 
What  happened?  An  attempt  was  made  by 
direct  appeal  to  Mr.  Newton  D.  Baker  to  have 
the  book  suppressed  by  military  order.  In  a 
letter  to  the  State  Department,  Mr.  Joseph  C 
Pelletier,  District  Attorney  of  Boston,  makes 
onslaught  on  Dr.  John  R.  Mott  and  compli- 
ments my  own  country  in  this  vivacious 
fashion: 

Your  Honor— that  is  Mr.  Baker — 
knows  full  well  the  interpretation  which 
our  Doughboys  gave  the  initials  ''A.  E. 
F."--'*After  England  Failed." 


Again: 


God  preserve  us  from  England's  treat- 
ment of  labour,  of  the  poor,  of  the  sick. 


6  FOREWORD 

Again: 

We  need  no  French,  no  English,  no 
Italian  propaganda  to  stimulate  us  to  just 
regard  for  your  European  brethren.  The 
American  people  want  facts. 

This,  I  confess,  interested  me  very  much. 
Anything  a  Frenchman  or  an  Italian  or  an 
Enghshman  may  say  in  the  United  States  is 
"propaganda.''  But  anything  about  the  Irish 
Republic  is  ''facts." 

This  monopoly  claimed  for  anti-British 
writing  is  of  course  repudiated  with  indigna- 
tion by  the  more  reputable  journals  throughout 
the  United  States.  It  is,  however,  sufficiently 
serious  to  warrant  a  word  of  genial  warning 
before  things  drift  any  further.  This  morn- 
ing, I  have  cabled  to  Britain  the  information 
contained  in  the  following  announcement: 

ASKS  PRESIDENT  TO  RECEIVE 
IRISH  ENVOY 

Special  to  The  New  York  Times 
Washington,  May  6. — Representative 
James  A.  Hammill  of  New  Jersey  offered 


FOREWORD  7 

to-day  in  the  House  of  Representatives  a 
joint  resolution  seeking  to  have  Congress 
'^suggest"  to  President  Wilson  that  he 
refuse  to  receive  Sir  Auckland  Geddes 
as  ''Ireland's  diplomatic  representative." 
The  resolution  suggests  that  the  President 
receive,  instead,  Dr.  Patrick  McCarton, 
"the  Minister  named  by  the  duly  elected 
Government  of  the  Republic  of  Ireland." 
No  action  was  taken  on  the  resolution, 
v/hich  was  referred  to  committee.  The 
Hammill  resolution  read: 

"Whereas,  Sir  Auckland  Geddes  is  about 
to  present  his  credentials  as  Ambassador 
from  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  to  the 
United  States;  and, 

"Whereas,  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  in  Paris,  on  January  20,  19 19, 
said,  'we  are  here  to  see  that  every  people 
shall  govern  themselves,  not  as  we  wish, 
but  as  they  wish' ;  and, 

"Whereas,  the  people  of  Ireland,  in 
December,  19 18,  by  a  vote  of  3  to  i, 
elected  to  live  under  a  republican  form  of 
government;  and. 


8  FOREWORD 

Whereas,  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States,  on  March  i6,  1920,  reaffirmed  its 
allegiance  to  the  principle  of  self  de- 
termination and  applied  that  principle  di- 
rectly to  the  Republic  of  Ireland  in  the 
Gerry  reservation; 

"Now,  therefore,  be  it  resolved,  That 
the  Congress  of  the  United  States  respect- 
fully suggest  to  the  President  of  the 
United  States  that,  in  consonance  with 
Americans  repeated  declaration  of  prin- 
ciples during  the  World  War,  he  refuse 
to  receive  the  said  Sir  Auckland  Geddes 
as  Ireland's  diplomatic  representative,  but 
receive,  instead  Dr.  Patrick  McCarton, 
the  Minister  named  by  the  duly-elected 
Government  of  the  Republic  of  Ireland." 

Now  let  us  get  right  away  from  all  camou- 
flage and  excuses  in  this  business.  This  reso- 
lution, introduced  seriously  into  Congress, 
means  neither  more  nor  less  than  a  proposal 
to  let  a  second  British  Ambassador  go  home 
without  presenting  his  credentials.  In  other 
words,  it  is  a  demand  in  Congress  for  the 


FOREWORD  9 

severance  of  diplomatic  relations  between  the 
United  States  and  the  United  Kingdom,  with 
all  that  this  implies. 

In  view  of  this  resolution  and  of  what  I 
must  call  the  candid  handling  of  British  af- 
fairs which  has  preceded  it,  Americans  them- 
selves have  desired  this  book.  They  feel  that 
to  tear  apart  the  English  speaking  nations  at 
this  grave  moment  in  the  history  of  the  world 
is  simply  incendiarism  over  an  uncovered  pow- 
der magazine. 

Certain  of  the  features  in  the  Appendix  are 
taken  with  permission  from  Current  History. 
Also  Cartoons  are  included  by  courtesy  of  the 
New  York  Tribune  and  Life.  To  these  pub- 
lications I  tender  my  acknowledgments. 


CONTENTS 


Foreword 

I.  The  Grievances  of  Ireland 

II.  Is  Ireland  Plundered?  .     . 

III.  The  Verdict  of  Ulster 

IV.  The  Fight  for  Home  Rule 
V.  The  Lloyd  George  Settlement  . 

VI.  Is  Independence  Conceivable?  . 

VII.     Irish   Propaganda   in   the   United 
States     


PAGE 

3 

13 

19 

29 

37 
56 
65 


90 

103 
no 


VIII.    The  Disorders  in  Ireland     .     . 
IX.    The  Argument  on  Secession  .     . 

Appendices 

a.  The  Home  Rule  Bill — Summary 

OF  its  Provisions        .     .     .     .133 

b,  Mr.  Lloyd   George's   Statement  143 

c,  Ex-Premier  Asquith's  Criticisms  151 

d.  Mr.  Bonar  Law's  Reply    .     .     .155 

II 


THE  GRIEVANCES  OF  IRELAND 

THE  citizens  of  the  United  States  are 
to-day  self-constituted  into  a  jury  of 
one  hundred  million  persons,  sitting 
in  solemn  judgment  on  the  great  case  of  Ire- 
land  versus  England.  The  Court  of  Public 
Opinion  rings  with  the  eloquent  plea  of  the 
Irish  Prosecutor  against  the  Prisoner  at  the 
Bar.  Be  the  Prisoner  guilty  or  be  he  innocent, 
it  is  clear  that  by  the  process  of  Law,  he  is 
entitled  to  present  to  the  Jury  any  facts  which 
may  be  necessary  to  a  fair  verdict.  To  this 
Suit,  Ireland  and  England  are  both  parties. 
All  the  more  important  is  it  that  the  United 
States  should  maintain  an  attitude  completely 
free  from  bias. 

In  the  following  few  pages,  I  purpose  fur- 
nishing   the    Jury    with    facts    not    at    the 
13 


14  THE   IRISH  CASE 

moment  easily  available  in  the  United  States. 
It  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  deny  that  Ire- 
land has  suffered  from  many  and  lamentable 
grievances.  In  so  far  as  England  was  to  blame 
for  this  state  of  things,  I  shall  not  attempt  to 
excuse  her.  In  so  far  as  she  is  still  to  blame, 
I  shall  not  defend  her,  except  by  remarking 
that  no  nation  is  perfect  and  that  every  nation, 
therefore,  in  passing  judgment  on  its  neigh- 
bour should  remember  its  own  peccadilloes.  I 
see  no  reason  why  the  Cause  of  Ireland  should 
not  be  handled  with  good  humour  and  sanity. 
All  that  we  need  is  the  truth  about  it  and  Truth 
seldom  loses  her  temper. 

If  we  analyse  the  grievances  of  Ireland,  we 
shall  find  that  they  fall  into  four  main  cate- 
gories : 

(i)  Religious 

(2)  Agrarian 

(3)  Financial 

(4)  Parliamentary 

What  is  the  first  broad  fact  to  be  faced? 
It  is  that  of  these  four  grievances,  the  first 
three  have  entirely  passed  away  leaving  only 
the  fo  Tth  to  be  dealt  with.    In  Ireland  to-day 


THE  GRIEVANCES  OF  IRELAND      15 

— as  I  shall  show — there  are  no  religious,  no 
agrarian,  and  no  financial  grievances  seriously 
alleged,  and  the  whole  discussion  is  concen- 
trated upon  the  best  way  of  remedying  the 
Parliamentary  grievance. 

What  is  the  next  broad  fact  to  be  faced? 
It  is  that  all  the  grievances  developed  at  a 
remote  period  when  in  Britain  herself  the 
people  were  still  struggling  for  their  liberties. 
This  was  not  a  quarrel  between  England  and 
Ireland.  It  was  a  quarrel  in  both  England  and 
Ireland  between  the  unrepresented  people  and 
their  despotic  rulers. 

In  England,  the  Suffrage  only  dates  from 
the  Year  1834.  It  was  then  a  suffrage  about 
as  generous  as  that  enjoyed  by  colored  folk  in 
the  Southern  States  to-day  in  the  United  States. 
All  the  grievances  of  Ireland  had  been  inflicted 
before  the  year  1834.  The  penal  laws  had 
done  their  worst.  The  land  system  had  been 
in  full  swing  since  the  days  of  King  Henry  II 
who  brought  it  over  from  feudal  France. 
Overtaxation  and  the  exclusion  of  Irish  prod- 
ucts were  already  on  record.  And  thirty  years 
had  passed  since  Pitt  had  destroyed  the  Irish 


i6  THE  IRISH  CASE 

Parliament.  The  fundamental  miscalculation 
of  the  Irish  extremists  is  to  treat  the  England 
which  sends  scores  of  Labour  members  to  the 
House  of  Commons  as  if  she  were  still  the 
England  of  Cromwell  and  Elizabeth  and  James 
I  and  George  III.  Since  the  great  Reform 
Bill  of  Eighty  years  ago,  the  Franchise  has 
been  frequently  extended  until  it  is  actually 
in  advance  of  the  United  States  in  respect 
of  Women's  Suffrage.  A's  the  people  obtained 
power,  they  dealt  more  and  more  firmly  with 
the  Irish  as  with  their  own  grievances.  De 
Valera  is  not  attacking  aristocratic  England. 
He  is  attacking  the  England  of  the  Trade 
Union,  of  the  Baptist  Chapel,  of  the  Methodist 
Class  Meeting.  He  is  attacking  the  England 
that  chose  Lady  Astor,  an  American  girl,  to 
be  the  first  sitting  member  of  the  House  of 
Commons — a  woman.  This  England  has  made 
proposal  after  proposal  to  the  Irish  nation.  It 
has  invited  Irishmen  to  bring  forward  their 
own  proposals.  There  is  not  a  party  in  Britain 
and  there  is  not  a  statesman  in  Britain  who 
does  not  to-day  want  Ireland  to  accept  her  full 
liberties. 


THE  GRIEVANCES  OF  IRELAND      17 

It  would  be  absurd  for  me  to  describe  once 
again  what  was  meant  by  the  Penal  Laws. 
They  were  iniquitous — indeed,  nearly  as  iniq- 
uitous as  the  attempt  to  suppress  my  own 
Quaker  ancestors.  But  after  all,  they  were 
only  the  inevitable  reaction  of  the  Protestants 
against  the  terrible  persecutions  which  the 
Roman  Church  had  inflicted  on  their  fore- 
fathers in  Spain,  Britain,  France  and  other 
countries.  From  my  own  college,  Latimer, 
though  a  Bishop,  was  led  out  to  be  burnt  alive, 
and  being  burnt  alive  is  not  pleasant,  whether 
for  others  or  for  Latimer.  Moreover,  many 
of  these  laws  were  inflicted  also  on  Puritans. 
That  was  why  three  centuries  ago,  the  May- 
flower set  sail  for  Plymouth,  Massachusetts. 
The  point  here  is,  however,  that  whatever  may 
have  been  the  case  in  the  past,  there  is  to-day 
perfect  religious  liberty  wherever  the  English 
language  is  spoken. 

As  a  rule,  Roman  Catholics  are  in  a  minority. 
But  they  are  none  the  less  free.  In  London, 
they  are  decorating  the  most  resplendent  cathe- 
dral in  the  Metropolis.  In  Ireland,  they  have 
their  own  schools  maintained  out  of  the  Im- 


1 8  THE  IRISH  CASE 

perial  Exchequer  and  their  own  Universities 
similarly  supported.  The  Hierarchy  in  Ireland 
has  a  far  more  rigid  grip  over  education  than 
would  be  allowed  to  any  clergy  in  the  United 
States.  Under  these  circumstances,  I  do  not 
see  that  anything  further  need  be  said  about 
the  Religious  Grievances  of  Ireland.  If  Eng- 
lishmen were  omnipotent,  they  could  not  alter 
the  past.  There  is  nothing  to  atone  for  that 
past  which,  in  matters  of  religion,  they  have 
not  done.  If  there  is  any  country  where  the 
Clergy  have  more  power  than  in  Ireland,  one 
would  like  to  know  of  it. 


II 

IS  IRELAND  PLUNDERED? 

I  WILL  now  deal  with  the  accusation  that 
Britain  is  to-day  plundering  and  robbing 
Ireland.    If  this  is  the  fact,  then,  I  admit 
that  it  is  a  very  shocking  affair  but  the  question 
to  be  decided  first  is  whether  it  is  a  fact. 
Broadly,  the  charge  is  twofold  in  character. 
First,  Ireland  is  being  taxed  out  of  existence. 
And    secondly,    her    industries    are    being 
strangled. 

Let  us  take  these  allegations  in  turn. 
It  is  admitted  that,  fifty  years  ago,  Ireland 
was  overtaxed.  This  was  shown  on  the  records 
not  of  Ireland  merely  but  of  the  British 
Treasury  and  the  verdict  was  based  on  com- 
parative wealth  as  well  as  population.  When 
the  case  was  thus  made  clear,  the  grievance 
19 


20  THE  IRISH  CASE 

was  dealt  with.  The  last  financial  year  of 
peace  was  from  March,  1913  to  March,  19 14. 
If  you  take  the  whole  of  the  Revenue  raised 
in  Ireland  during  that  twelve  months,  you  will 
find  that  it  was  fifty-five  and  a  half  million 
dollars.  If  you  take  the  money  spent  on  Ire- 
land and  in  Ireland  for  the  sole  benefit  of 
Irishmen,  you  will  find  that  it  was  sixty-one 
and  a  half  million  dollars.  In  other  words, 
Ireland  was  asked  to  pay  not  one  penny  to  the 
Army,  the  Navy,  the  National  Debt,  the  Dip- 
lomatic Services,  the  Court,  or  any  other  Im- 
perial or  as  Americans  would  put  it.  Federal 
purpose.  She  was  more  fortunate  in  this  re- 
spect than  any  of  the  forty-eight  states  in  the 
American  Union,  and  this  at  a  period  when, 
even  before  the  war,  the  rest  of  Europe  was 
groaning  under  military  burdens.  As  a  coun- 
try defended  free  of  charge  to  her  taxpayers, 
Ireland  was  unique. 

I  am,  of  course,  well  aware  that  in  saying 
that  Ireland  was  defended  free  of  charge,  I 
am  using  a  fact  which  has  no  terrors  for  Mr. 
De  Valera.  Sinn  Fein  regards  the  Germany 
of  the  Kaiser  as  a  friend,  not  as  an  enemy.    In 


IS  IRELAND  PLUNDERED?  21 

Berlin,  the  emissary  of  Sinn  Fein  was  Sir 
Roger  Casement,  who  had  drawn  a  British 
pension  and  received  with  gratitude  a  British 
knighthood.  Owing  to  long  residence  in  trop- 
ical climates,  he  had  become  a  moral  pervert 
and  was  a  suitable  instrument  for  the  treachery 
which  he  perpetrated.  Years  before,  I  had  had 
a  conversation  with  him  in  which  he  had  de- 
nounced the  Monroe  Doctrine  and  the  foreign 
policy  of  the  United  States  as  an  iniquitous 
and  selfish  reservation  of  South  America  from 
German  enterprise.  In  Berlin,  he  tried  to  se- 
duce Irish  prisoners  of  war  who  stood  firm 
against  his  bribes  and  his  threats,  and  he  then 
sailed  for  Ireland  on  a  submarine  belonging  to 
the  fleet  that  sank  the  Liisitania  with  American 
citizens  and  the  Tuscania  with  American 
troops. 

Casement's  action  may  be  compared  with 
the  position  of  De  Valera,  as  reported  in  the 
American  press: 

As  far  as  England  is  concerned,  the  Irish 
people  wished  and  hoped  that  Germany  would 
win  the  war. 


22  THE  IRISH  CASE 

In  presenting  this  quotation,  I  must  make 
it  clear  that  I  do  not  make  myself  responsible 
for  so  cruel  a  slander  on  the  gallant  Irish  dead. 
I  am  merely  allowing  Sinn  Fein  to  speak  for 
itself.  Different  folk  approach  this  question 
from  different  standpoints.  Sinn  Fein  wanted 
the  Germans  in  Ireland.  Sinn  Fein  prefers 
the  fate  of  Belgium  under  the  Germans  to  the 
fate  of  Ireland  under  the  British.  They  do 
not  apparently  take  Cardinal  Mercier's  view 
of  the  outrages  committed  by  the  German 
Armies  on  Catholic  Churches  and  Catholic  nuns. 
Therefore  when  I  say  that  Ireland  and  her 
Churches  and  her  nuns  were  defended  from 
similar  outrages  by  a  British  Fleet  maintained 
without  charge  to  Ireland,  Sinn  Fein  is  doubt- 
less unstirred. 

But  I  have  as  yet  greatly  understated  the 
case.  We  have  seen  that  fifty-five  million 
dollars  was  raised  in  Ireland  and  sixty-one 
millions  spent  in  Ireland.  This  means  that 
Ireland  was  not  even  meeting  the  cost  of  her 
own  education,  old  age  pensions,  health  insur- 
ance and  similar  services.  She  was  accepting 
from  England  a  steadily  rising  subsidy  of  six 


IS  IRELAND   PLUNDERED?  23 

millions  a  year  and  this   was  how  England 
''plundered"  her. 

The  war  then  broke  out  and  taxation  was 
increased  throughout  the  United  Kingdom  and 
indeed  throughout  the  world.  The  question  is 
whether  Ireland  is  now  paying  an  unfair  pro- 
portion. I  will  put  the  answer  in  the  form 
of  a  table,  based  on  the  official  returns  for 
the  year  19 18-19 19.  First,  we  shall  see  how 
much  each  country,  England,  Scotland  and 
Ireland,  paid  altogether  into  the  Treasury. 
Next,  we  shall  see  how  much  of  this  came 
back  to  the  country  in  question  as  pensions 
school  grants  and  so  on.  Finally,  we  are  left 
with  the  balance  which  each  country  handed 
over  to  the  cost  of  the  war  and  imperial  or 
"federal"  purposes. 


Totai 

Spent     Balance  for  Im- 

Country 

Taxes 

Locally    perial  Purposes 

England 

and 

Wales 

.  •.•  $3455,310,000 

$739,237,500    $2,736,072,500 

Scotland 

486,605,000 

97,635,000         388,970,000 

Ireland  . 

186,375,000 

110,807,500          75,567,500 

What  do  these  figures  mean?    The  popula- 
tion of  Scotland  and  Ireland  is  about  the  same, 


24  THE  IRISH  CASE 

Yet  Scotland  has  to  pay  in  imperial  taxation 
about  three  hundred  and  eighty-nine  million 
dollars  while  Ireland  has  to  pay  only  seventy- 
live  and  a  half  million  dollars  or  one  fifth  the 
sum.  Roughly,  England  and  Wales  pay  sixty- 
eight  dollars  a  year,  Scotland  pays  eighty-eight 
dollars  a  year  and  Ireland  pays  eighteen  dol- 
lars. So  much  for  overtaxation.  I  live  in  New 
York  State  and  am  ready  at  any  time  to  com- 
promise with  the  authorities  who  collect  my 
taxes,  by  exchanging  the  American  basis  for 
the  Irish  basis  of  finance. 

You  cannot  strike  a  balance  between  Ireland 
and  Britain  without  taking  into  the  account 
the  fact  that  the  Irish  tenants  are  buying  their 
farms  with  money  lent  by  Britain  and  raised 
in  London.  This  scheme  represents  a  liability 
to  Britain  of  £150,000,000  or  according  to  the 
usual  reckoning,  seven  hundred  and  fifty  mil- 
lion dollars.  More  than  two-thirds  of  this 
money  has  actually  been  found.  The  interest 
paid  upon  it  including  the  sinking  fund  which 
settles  the  debt  in  68  years  is  only  3^%  or 
taking  interest  alone  less  than  half  of  the  rate 
that  I  am  paying  on  a  house  mortgage  in  New 


IS  IRELAND  PLUNDERED?  25 

York.  And  during  the  war,  Britain,  while 
lending  money  to  Ireland  at  under  3^0  has  been 
glad  to  raise  money  in  Wall  Street  at  the  equiv- 
alent of  6%,  as  every  American  knows. 

Even  that  is  not  the  whole  story.  The  Bill 
proposed  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George  adds  nothing 
to  Ireland's  contribution  to  Imperial  funds  as 
estimated  at  the  present  time.  But  the  Bill 
does  hand  back  to  Ireland  the  whole  of  her 
debt  to  the  United  Kingdom  in  respect  of  Land 
Purchase.  In  other  words,  the  annuities  will 
go  to  the  Irish  Exchequer  and  Britain  must 
repay  her  Irish  liability  out  of  her  own  pocket 
This  is  a  gift  of  500  million  dollars  or  more 
than  100  dollars  for  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  in  Ireland,  whether  Sinn  Fein  or  Union- 
ist, for  we  draw  no  distinction  on  ground  of 
loyalty.  Of  course,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
Irish  landlord  is  entitled  to  nothing  at  all.  And 
I  for  one  hold  no  brief  for  landlords.  But 
if  that  argument  be  advanced,  how  far  are 
you  going  to  carry  it?  There  are  Irish  land- 
lords in  New  York  City.  There  are  other 
holders  of  all  kinds  of  property.  Lenin  and 
Trotsky  would  have  simply  taken  that  prop- 


26  THE   IRISH   CASE 

erty.  That  was  the  naked  Bolshevism  which 
has  been  tried  in  Russia  and  is  being  abandoned 
even  by  its  parents.  Is  that  also  to  be  among 
the  methods  of  Sinn  Fein?  Does  ^'Ourselves 
Alone"  mean  a  general  confiscation?  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  Irish  people  have  been  here 
misrepresented  by  their  alleged  spokesmen. 
They  pay  their  dues  on  the  Land  Purchase 
Scheme  with  strict  fidelity  to  the  law  and  the 
equity  of  the  case. 

Secondly,  I  come  to  the  question  whether 
Irish  industries  are  being  strangled.  I  will 
take  two  years,  1904  and  191 4.  Both  these 
were  in  the  main  years  of  peace.  Here  in  a 
table  is  exactly  what  Ireland  bought  and  sold 
in  those  years: 

1904  1914 

Irish  Imports £55,345,000         i73,995,ooo 

Irish  Exports 49,785,000  77,311,000 

These  figures  show  that  while  England  was 
"strangling  Irish  industries,"  both  exports  and 
imports  were  rising  by  substantial  percentages. 

The  war  then  broke  out  and  Ireland  was 
surrounded  by  the  submarines  of  the  German 
allies  of  Sinn  Fein.    Yet  thanks  to  the  Allied 


IS  IRELAND   PLUNDERED?  27 

Navies,  Ireland  could,  in  a  year  of  war,  im- 
port goods  to  the  value  of  £105,205,000  and 
export  goods  to  the  value  of  £107,171,000, 
or  practically  double  the  value  of  her  trade 
in  1904.  Let  us  suppose  that  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  States  had  not  kept  open  the 
seas  for  Ireland.  Where  v^ould  this  trade 
have  been? 

And  Ireland  got  good  prices  for  what  she 
sold.  The  money  that  she  received  was  as  we 
have  seen  £107,171,000.  At  the  prices  of  1904, 
this  figure  would  only  have  been  £58,858,000. 
Even  in  Ireland  the  excess  profits  tax  was 
leviable. 

One  complaint  of  the  Sinn  Feiners  is  that 
Ireland  markets  her  goods  in  Great  Britain. 
Frankly,  I  do  not  quite  understand  where  the 
grievance  here  lies.  In  the  old  bad  days  before 
the  Englishman  had  the  vote  our  rulers  put  on 
tariffs  against  Ireland  and  there  was  a  howl. 
Then  we  got  the  vote  and  took  off  the  tariffs 
admitting  all  Irish  goods,  including  whiskey 
and  stout,  free  of  customs,  and  again  there  is 
a  howl  because  apparently  we  buy  what  Irish- 
men wish  to  sell.     Some  of  the  biggest  ship- 


28  THE  IRISH  CASE 

building  plants  in  the  world  are  situated  in 
Belfast  which  is  an  Irish  town.  Vessels  can 
be  ordered  to-morrow  and  used  to  transport 
Irish  goods  to  other  countries  as  for  instance 
the  United  States,  which  does  put  a  tariff  on 
them.  The  reason  why  this  is  not  done  is 
that  Britain  is  Ireland's  best  customer.  Our 
money  is  detested  but  it  is  received. 


Ill 

THE  VERDICT  OF  ULSTER 

IF  Britain  be  really  crushing  out  Ireland's 
industries,  the  first  protests  should  surely 
come  from  the  part  of  Ireland  which  de- 
pends on  such  industries.  Why  is  it  that  Ulster 
is  in  that  event  so  resolute  for  the  British  con- 
nection? Most  of  the  businesses  in  Ulster  are 
run  by  Scotsmen  in  blood,  the  Celts  of  Cale- 
donia, and  they  are  not  as  a  rule  indifferent 
to  what  injures  their  prosperity. 

We  are  told  that  England  is  preventing  the 
development  of  Ireland's  coalfields.  Where 
is  coal  more  needed  than  in  the  shipyards  of 
Belfast?  The  truth  is  of  course  that  there 
is  nothing  whatever  to  prevent  Irishmen  or 
Americans  or  anybody  else  digging  in  Ireland 
for  coal  or  iron  or  diamonds  if  the  operation 
is  profitable.  With  the  price  of  coal  in  Europe 
29 


30  THE  IRISH  CASE 

three  and  four  times  what  it  was  before  the 
war  and  France  fighting  for  the  Saar  Valley 
and  Italy  cutting  down  her  forests,  the  idea 
that  some  ill-disposed  Englishman  is  saying  to 
Irishmen  "Thou  shalt  not  hew"  is  ridiculous. 
In  fact,  there  are  some  Irishmen  who  might 
be  better  employed  mining  coal  for  the  benefit 
of  their  neighbours  than  they  are  at  present. 

What  is  the  opinion  of  industrial  Ulster  on 
these  matters?  I  have  often  discussed  things 
in  that  quarter  and  this  is  what  I  have  been 
told.  Asked  why  he  fears  a  Parliament  at 
Dublin,  the  Ulster  business  man  answers: 

We  are  Protestants  and  the  majority  in 
the  south  and  west  are  Catholics.  We 
are  manufacturers  and  they  are  farmers. 
They  do  not  understand  us  and  they  like 
us  still  less.  When  it  comes  to  taxation, 
where  should  we  be?  To  relieve  the 
farmers,  they  would  put  a  tariff  around 
Belfast  and  levy  customs  on  our  raw 
materials.  Everything  that  Belfast  makes, 
is  first  imported  in  crude  form.  There 
can  be  no  ships  without  wood  and  metals 


THE   VERDICT  OF  ULSTER  31 

and  there  can  be  no  linen  without  flax. 
All  these  things  must  come  in  free  if  we 
are  to  retain  our  position  in  neutral  mar- 
kets. To  break  the  fiscal  unity  between 
England  and  Ireland  means  our  ruin. 

It  is  not  for  me  to  say  whether  the  argument 
is  good  or  bad.  Some  of  the  economic  rubbish 
talked  by  Sinn  Feiners  who  presumably  would 
have  power  in  an  Irish  Republic  is  not  exactly 
calculated  to  reassure  the  more  nervous  Ulster- 
men.  But  the  point  is  that  these  Ulstermen 
are  as  much  Irish  as  De  Valera  himself.  They 
say  that  they  are  prepared  to  fight  for  their 
independence  against  the  proposed  Republic. 
And  they  have  certainly  voted  pretty  decisively 
on  the  subject. 

At  the  last  General  Election,  the  results  for 
Dissentient  Ulster  were  as  follows: 

Nation-     Sinn 
Unionist      alist        Fein     Majority 

Antrim 

North 9,621  2,673  6,948 

Mid 10,711  2,791  7,920 

East    15,206  861  14,345 

South 13,270  2,313  10,957 


32  THE  IRISH  CASE 

Armagh 

North  10,238  2,860  7,378 

Mid 8,431  5,688  2,743 

South   4,345            78  4,266 

Down 

Mid 10,639                        707         9,932 

East    6,077                      3,876         2,201 

North  9,200                                         9,200 

South   8,756            33          8,723 

Londonderry 

North 10,530  3,951  6,579 

South   8,942  3,425  5,517 

Belfast 

Queens  University  1,487  118  1,369 

Cromac    ii,459  997  10,462 

Duncairn 11,637  271  11,366 

Falls   8,488        3,245  5,243 

Ormeau    7,460  388  7,072 

Pottinger 8,574  393  8,181 

St.    Anne's 9,155  i,34i  7,8i4 

Shankhill    11,840  534  ii,3o6 

Victoria  9,309  395  8,904 

Woodvale   12,232  1,247  10,985 

Look  for  a  moment  at  these  figures.  In  two 
of  these  constituencies,  De  Valera  himself  was 
the  defeated  candidate.  In  South  Down  he 
only  polled  33  votes.  And  the  plurality  against 
Sinn  Fein  in  this  area  would  be  the  more  strik- 
ing if  I  had  included  third  candidatures,  many 
of  which  polled  far  more  votes  than  the  Sinn 


THE  VERDICT  OF  ULSTER  33 

Feiner,  who  was  away  at  the  bottom  of  the 
record. 

Yet  in  face  of  this  almost  unanimous  verdict 
by  the  industrial  area  of  Ireland,  Sinn  Fein — 
knowing  that  the  above  facts  are  not  readily 
available  to  the  public  in  the  United  States — 
comes  here  and  talks  as  if  an  Irish  Republic 
were  a  perfectly  simple  proposition,  on  which 
everybody  in  Ireland  is  entirely  agreed  except 
an  insignificant  minority. 

It  is  true  that  Sinn  Fein  swept  the  rest  of 
Ireland  and  I  shall  in  due  course  admit  frankly 
that  the  fault  must  be  shared  by  England  and 
others.  But  time  will  show  whether  the  vic- 
tory was  a  gesture  of  irritation  with  the  wor- 
ries of  war  or  a  permanent  verdict.  If  the 
verdict  is  permanent,  then  it  is  clear  that  if 
the  South  and  West  of  Ireland  has  a  right  to 
go  off  by  herself,  the  North  and  East  has  a 
right  to  live  in  continued  association  with 
England. 

But  is  the  verdict  permanent?  Since  the 
General  Election,  there  has  been  a  municipal 
contest  in  Ireland.  The  one  issue  was  Republic 
or  no  Republic  and  the  voting  was  very  re- 


34  THE   IRISH  CASE 

markable.  The  number  of  electors  in  the  coun- 
try was  474,992.  Of  these,  322,244 — which  is 
a  very  high  proportion  for  a  Local  Govern- 
ment Vote — went  to  the  polls.  The  method 
was  proportional  representation.  And  the  first 
preferences  were  as  follows: 

Sinn    Fein 87,311 

Labour 57,626 

Independents  and  Constitutional  Nationalists 91.375 

Unionists   85,932 

Look  carefully  at  those  figures.  They  mean 
that  of  the  first  preferences,  Sinn  Fein  only 
obtained  about  one  fourth.  If  you  add  the 
Sinn  Fein  and  the  Labour  vote  together,  you 
still  get  only  a  minority  as  against  the  Union- 
ists and  the  Constitutional  Nationalists  who 
still  want  the  Union  Jack  to  fly  over  Ireland. 
The  total  Republican  vote  put  at  its  very  high- 
est is  only  145,000  out  of  322,000  or  a  good 
deal  less  than  half.  But  many  of  the  Labour 
votes  were  cast  in  North  East  Ulster  where 
it  is  fairly  safe  to  assume  that  they  were  not 
Republican. 

As  for  the  seats  they  were  distributed  as 
follows : 


THE  VERDICT  OF  ULSTER         35 


OS 


Provinces         o        c         o       .2        o       a       '3 

'S       .S        *S       "^      t^      '2        o 
p        CO         J        ^        p^       ^5        H 

Ulster    308  114  109  94  5  33  663 

Leinster  57  206  151  69  62  45  590 

Munster 7  207  no  60  37  66  487 

Connaught    ...       2  44  24  15  4  17  106 

Total...  374   571   394  238  108  i6i  1846 

What  do  these  figures  show?  Explain  it 
how  you  will,  Sinn  Fein  has  carried  only  571 
seats  out  of  1846  seats  in  the  Local  Govern- 
ment of  the  country,  or  fewer  than  a  third. 
Two  out  of  three  of  the  men  actually  doing 
the  work  of  Ireland  to-day  have  not  accepted 
De  Valera's  authority.  All  those  men  are 
elected  by  the  free  votes  of  the  people.  And 
it  has  to  be  remembered  that  the  intimidation 
in  the  south  and  west  of  Ireland  is  all  on  the 
side  of  the  Sinn  Feiners.  The  United  States 
has  had  a  touch  of  the  kind  of  thing  that  is 
going  on  in  the  famous  terrorism  of  the  Molly 
Maguires  in  Pennsylvania  when,  for  many 
years,  police  were  threatened  by  men  disguised 
as  women  and  the  public  outraged  by  offences 


36  THE  IRISH  CASE 

against  life  and  property.  That  had  to  be 
stopped  and  was  ultimately  stopped  by  the 
American  authorities  and  the  phenomenon 
bears  a  family  likeness  to  some  more  shocking 
crimes  in  Ireland  to-day. 


IV 

THE  FIGHT  FOR  HOME  RULE 

I  BEGAN  by  explaining  that  Ireland  has 
suffered  from  four  main  grievances. 
These  grievances  have  been  first  religious, 
secondly  agrarian,  thirdly  financial,  and 
fourthly  Parliamentary.  We  have  seen  that 
of  these  grievances,  all  save  the  last  have  dis- 
appeared. There  is  no  persecution  of  the 
Catholics  in  Ireland.  There  are  no  landlords 
to  speak  of  left  in  Ireland.  And  there  is  no 
overtaxation  in  Ireland.  We  are  therefore 
free  to  discuss  the  one  and  only  grievance 
which  has  yet  to  be  removed  and  this  is  the 
need  for  a  Parliament  in  Ireland. 

It  is  no  part  of  the  British  case  to  deny  the 

facts  of  history.    When  William  Pitt  destroyed 

the  old  Parliament  of  Ireland,  using  for  the 

purpose  the  disgraceful  weapon  of  bribery,  he 

37 


38  THE  IRISH  CASE 

committed  a  high  crime  against  the  Hght.  The 
mitigating  promise  of  CathoHc  Emancipation 
was  not  fulfilled  and  the  offence  may  fairly  be 
ranked  with  the  folly  which  provoked  the 
American  Revolution.  In  both  instances,  a 
mad  king  was  a  contributory  cause.  And  in 
both  cases,  the  people  were  too  ignorant  and 
too  ill-represented  in  their  own  Parliament  at 
Westminster  to  make  protest  against  what  was 
being  done  in  their  name  at  a  distance,  as  it 
then  seemed,  in  days  when  travelling  was  dif- 
ficult. 

The  Irishmen  of  our  own  time  do  doubtless 
idealise  the  Parliament  that  used  to  be.  It 
was  elected  mainly  by  Protestants  and  on  a 
franchise  which  we  should  consider  absurdly 
narrow.  But  instead  of  being  broken  to  bits, 
it  should  have  been  reformed  and  democratised. 
There  are  many  people,  I  dare  say,  who  criti- 
cise the  British  House  of  Commons  or  Con- 
gress but  there  are  none  who  would  seriously 
advocate  abolishing  these  august  institutions. 
No  American  State  would  tolerate  the  loss  of 
its  Legislature  and  I  remember  with  what  sur- 
prise I  watched  in  Canada  the  reverence  in  a 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  HOME  RULE      39 

Provincial  capital  like  Toronto  for  Parlia- 
mentary forms.  There  you  see  the  Speaker 
in  his  gown,  the  Sergeant  at  Arms  with  his 
sword,  and  all  the  panoply  of  the  High  Court 
of  Parliament  at  Westminster,  simplified  m- 
deed  but  essentially  reproduced.  Yet  the 
Legislature  of  Ontario  is  only  one  of  many 
such  subordinate  bodies  in  the  Dominion  of 

Canada. 

Not  only  in  Ireland  but  in  England  also, 
the  destruction  of  the  parliament  in  Dublin  has 
been  hated  as  an  unpardonable  sacrilege  against 
the  very  shrine  of  Liberty.    What  the  devout 
Moslem  feels  at  hearing  that  some   famous 
Mosque  has  been  desecrated,  that  was  what 
I  was  taught  to  feel  as  a  boy  about  Pitt's 
blasphemous  offence.    The  first  political  speech 
that  I  ever  heard  was  by  T.  P.  O'Connor  and 
that  speech  was  about  Home  Rule.     It  left 
on  my  mind  an  indelible  impression.     As  a 
boy,   I  would  walk   for  miles  to  catch  one 
glimpse  of  Gladstone  as  he  passed  by  in  the 
train  on  his  immortal  campaigns  on  behalf  of 
a  restored  Parliamentary  system  in  Ireland. 
My  boyish  diaries  are  full  of  newspaper  cut- 


40  THE  IRISH  CASE 

tings  and  pictures  illustrating  the  early  debates 
on  Home  Rule  and  the  disclosures  of  the  Par- 
nell  Commission.  I  have  fought  three  elec- 
tions— ^^all  of  them  as  a  Home  Ruler,  and  for 
twelve  years  I  heard  every  important  debate 
in  the  Imperial  Parliament  and — what  is  more 
— described  them.  The  Parliament  House  at 
Dublin  is  now  the  headquarters  of  the  Bank 
of  Ireland  and  it  was  with  a  peculiar  sense 
of  indignation  that  one  watched  as  it  were 
the  money  changers  in  the  temple.  With 
cynical  ingenuity  the  statesmen  of  a  hundred 
years  ago  ordained  that  the  chamber  of  the 
Irish  Commons  should  be  so  completely  recon- 
structed into  bank  parlours  that  the  very  fabric 
of  it  should  cease  to  remind  the  people  of 
what  they  had  lost.  But  they  did  leave  the 
Irish  House  of  Lords,  which  they  thought  less 
dangerous  and  there  I  had  a  seat  in  the  first 
political  meeting  ever  held  in  that  august  as- 
sembly room  since  it  ceased  to  be  the  Senate 
of  the  Irish  Nation.  The  occasion  was  eight 
years  ago  and  a  speech  on  the  history  of  Par- 
liamentary customs  in  Ireland  was  delivered 
by  that  great  authority,  Professor  Swift  Mc- 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  HOME  RULE      41 

Neill,  who  is  by  ancestry  related  to  Dean  Swift, 
the  author  of  Gullive/s  Travels. 

If  these  were  my  feehngs  towards  Ireland — 
and  they  were  shared  by  millions  of  other 
Englishmen — you  may  imagine  how  deep  are 
the  sentiments  of  Irishmen  themselves  towards 
the  events  of  the  year  of  grace  or  to  them 
of  disgrace,  1800.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind, 
however,  that  under  her  Parliament,  Ireland 
had  shown  little  content.  Two  years  before 
the  blow  fell,  the  country  had  been  in  rebellion. 
The  Act  of  Union  was  a  desperate  alternative 
to  what  British  statesmen  had  come  to  regard 
as  a  constitutional  failure.  They  were,  I  be- 
lieve, profoundly  wrong  but  the  fact  remains 
that  they  did  not  take  action  without  serious 
reason.  The  British  Dominions  were  at  death- 
grips  with  Napoleon.  Even  in  the  Navy,  there 
had  been  mutinies.  And  the  troubles  in  Ire- 
land had  aggravated  the  strategic  situation, 
then  as  during  the  insurrection  of  Easter  191 5. 
Moreover,  that  very  House  of  Lords,  of  which 
I  have  spoken,  illustrated  the  passion  of  the 
period.  Still  on  the  walls  you  may  see  two 
tapestries,    showing   not   St.    Patrick   or   any 


42  THE   IRISH   CASE 

romance  of  Tara's  Halls  but  very  different  and 
far  bloodier  dramas.  The  Battle  of  the  Boyne 
is  on  one  side  of  the  room  and  the  Siege  of 
Londonderry  is  on  the  other.  The  Parliament 
House  itself  is  thus  eloquent  witness  of  the 
fact  that  Ireland  is  still  a  divided  country  as 
historically  she  always  has  been. 

It  was  in  1885  that  Gladstone  began  his  fight 
for  Home  Rule  in  Ireland.  In  our  recent 
political  history,  there  has  been  no  fight  more 
bitter  and  desperate.  The  first  difficulty  that 
had  to  be  faced  was  British  Unionism.  This 
consisted  of  the  Protestant  Liberals  who  fol- 
lowed Joseph  Chamberlain  and  John  Bright. 
These  formed  an  alliance  with  their  natural 
enemies,  the  Conservatives  under  the  late  Lord 
Salisbury.  In  the  year  1886  the  first  Home 
Rule  Bill  was  defeated  at  the  polls.  In  the 
year  1893  the  second  Home  Rule  Bill  was 
vetoed  by  the  House  of  Lords.  And  twenty 
years  elapsed  before  the  third  Home  Rule  Bill 
received  the  Royal  Assent.  It  was  a  wearisome 
struggle  lor  those  of  us  who  were  for  so  long 
on  the  losing  side  but  we  were  convinced  that 
in  the  end  the  predominant  partner,  as  Lord 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  HOME  RULE      43 

Rosebery  called  Great  Britain,  would  be  con- 
vinced of  the  justice  of  the  Irish  cause  and 
in  this  we  were  justified.  There  is  no  party 
and  there  is  no  statesman  in  any  British 
Dominion  who  does  not  to-day  desire  Ireland 
to  have  a  Self  Determining  Parliament  with 
an  autonomous  Cabinet  responsible  to  it.  The 
difficulties  have  been  reduced  to  Ireland  her- 
self. 

Since  the  year  1885,  this  fight  has  gone  on. 
The  delay  has  been  infinitely  wearisome  and 
disastrous  but  it  has  not  been  entirely  lost  time. 
In  this  generation  of  struggle,  some  of  the 
thorniest  of  Ireland's  problems  have  been 
soundly  settled.  Her  Land  system  was  the 
worst  and  is  now  the  le: !  'n  Europe.  Catholics 
and  Protestants  are  satisfied  with  the  provision 
of  Universities.  And  not  less  important  has 
been  the  establishment  of  Local  Government, 
as  completely  free  of  British  control  as  the 
City  of  San  Francisco  is  free  of  the  control 
of  Congress  or  of  the  State  of  New  York.  If 
there  is  bad  housing  in  Dublin,  it  is  not  the 
business  of  Great  Britain.  It  is  because  the 
City  of  Dublin  wishes  to  have  it  so.   Every  city 


44  THE  IRISH  CASE 

in  the  United  Kingdom,  like  every  City  in 
the  United  States  has  the  housing  that  it  de- 
serves. Land,  Local  Government  and  Univer- 
sities— these  have  all  been  provided  for  and 
any  one  of  these  questions  might  have  wrecked 
an  Irish  Parliament  at  the  outset  of  its  career. 
Also  all  these  problems  have  been  settled  with 
British  credit  and  British  cash,  in  addition  to 
the  resources  of  Ireland  herself. 

The  change  in  the  attitude  of  Britain  towards 
Ireland  is  due  in  part  to  a  broader  and  freer 
franchise.  Until  recent  years,  several  votes 
were  allowed  to  persons  in  Britain  who  owned 
a  particular  kind  of  property  and  these  people 
used  Ireland  as  a  convenient  obstacle  to  reform. 
The  plural  voter  has  disappeared.  So  great  is 
the  change  in  public  sentiment  that  many  people 
who  were  before  plural  voters  and  Conserva- 
tive are  now  supporting  Labour  candidates. 

This  means  that  there  is  now  no  longer  any 
political  combination  in  England  against  the 
claims  of  Ireland.  Even  the  Unionist  Party, 
whose  very  name  means  adherence  to  the  Act 
of  Union,  has  come  to  advocate  the  fullest 
measure  of  self  determination  in  the  sister  isle. 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  HOME  RULE      45 

The  House  of  Lords  is  crippled  and  can,  under 
the  Parliament  Act,  offer  no  effective  re- 
sistance to  an  Irish  settlement  even  if  the  peers 
wanted  to  do  so.  Not  that  they  any  longer 
desire  to  obstruct  the  claims  of  Ireland.  In 
the  first  place,  they  have  got  the  cash  for  their 
land  which  was  their  main  anxiety  in  past 
years.  And  in  the  second  place  they  see  what 
harm  an  unsettled  Irish  Question  is  doing  to 
British  prestige  abroad.  Therefore  we  may 
take  it  that  the  old  obstacles  in  the  way  of 
Ireland  getting  a  Parliament  have  vanished. 
Even  Mr.  Balfour  has  surrendered  and  occupies 
a  prominent  seat  on  the  penitent  form. 

I  can  well  understand  that  Ireland,  accus- 
tomed to  the  loose  and  inaccurate  abuse  of 
'"England"  which  has  been  common  political 
coinage  for  so  many  years,  should  fail  to  ap- 
preciate that  the  England  of  the  late  Lord 
Salisbury  and  the  late  Mr.  Chamberlain  has 
disappeared.  The  constant  insistence  on  past 
wrongs,  which  lose  nothing  in  the  telling,  has 
been  the  worst  possible  mental  food  for  an 
impressionable  and  poetic  people.  There  is 
not  a  country  in  Europe  that  does  not  envy 


46  THE  IRISH  CASE 

Ireland  her  present  prosperity  and  Ireland  de- 
serves that  prosperity.  By  refusing  to  go  to 
Westminster  and  playing  at  revolution  instead 
of  at  straight  politics,  the  Sein  Fein  members 
of  Parliament  have  cut  themselves  off  from 
the  facts  at  a  time  in  the  world's  history  v^^hen 
facts  are  irresistible  elements  in  framing 
policy. 

Let  us  then  consider  simply  and  briefly  the 
efforts  that  have  been  made  in  the  last  ten 
years  to  secure  for  Ireland  a  Parliament.  The 
position  in  July,  19 14,  was  entirely  clear  as 
far  as  England  was  concerned.  Her  Tories 
might  rage  furiously  together  as  indeed  they 
did,  but  the  Home  Rule  Act  was  on  the  Statute 
Book  and  had  received  the  Royal  Assent,  which 
I  inyself  heard  given  in  the  House  of  Lords. 

There  were  then  three  leaders  of  the  Irish 
Party,  John  Redmond,  John  Dillon  and  Joseph 
Devlin.  These  were  the  men  who  obviously 
would  have  to  govern  Ireland  under  the  new 
measure.  Two  of  them,  I  think,  had  served 
terms  of  imprisonment  as  political  offenders. 
But  all  of  them  were  now  in  intimate  touch 
with  Augustine  Birrell,  the  Chief  Secretary 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  HOME  RULE      47 

and  the  best  Chief  Secretary  that  Ireland  ever 
has  had.  Were  these  men  prepared  to  accept 
office  under  the  Home  Rule  Act  and  administer 
it  for  the  whole  of  Ireland?  It  is  an  open 
secret  that  they  or  one  or  two  of  them  were 
not.  And  the  reason  of  their  hesitation  was 
the  open  opposition  of  Ulster.  They  agreed 
that  a  settlement  with  Ulster  was  essential. 
If  they  had  said  that  they  were  prepared  to  go 
forward  with  the  bill  and  enforce  it  on  Ulster, 
they  could  have  had  it  in  19 14.  And  I  was  one 
of  the  many  Liberals  who  wanted  that  word  to 
be  said. 

A  Conference  was  then  called  at  Bucking- 
ham Palace  and  it  was  opened  by  King  George 
himself.  Mr.  Redmond  attended  and  so  did 
Sir  Edward  Carson.  The  whole  situation  was 
reviewed  and  the  one  object  of  British  states- 
men of  all  parties  was  to  overcome  in  some 
way  the  still  fierce  animosities  of  the  two  Irish 
factions.  In  the  end,  it  was  decided  that  the 
only  plan  was  to  cut  from  the  Bill  or  more 
accurately  the  Act  the  dissentient  counties  of 
north  east  Ulster  until  the  time  should  come 
when  they  .would  enter  the   scheme  of  their 


48  THE  IRISH  CASE 

own  accord.  Many  people  believed  that  the 
minority  would  not  stay  out  long.  With  a 
Parliament  sitting  in  Dublin,  they  would,  as 
combative  Irishmen,  want  to  be  in  the  show. 
But  in  everyone's  interests,  it  was  a  good  thing 
that  Ulster  should  adopt  the  new  arrangement 
of  her  own  free  will  and  without  a  sense  of 
defeat.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  entire  problem 
to  be  faced  now  concerned  Ireland  and  Ireland 
alone.  British  statesmen  only  appeared  in  it 
as  conciliators. 

Conciliation  failed.  It  failed  solely  for  an 
Irish  reason.  The  question  arose  what  was 
to  be  regarded  as  the  true  definition  of  dis- 
sentient Ulster.  It  was  the  kind  of  question 
that  has  disturbed  the  statesmen  of  Europe  a 
score  of  times  during  the  formulation  of  the 
Peace  Treaty.  Was  Fiume  to  be  an  Italian 
or  a  Jugo-Slav  city?  Was  Dantzig  to  belong 
to  Poland  or  to  Prussia?  And  what  about 
certain  areas  in  Schleswig-Holstein?  Indeed, 
we  have  the  same  kind  of  discussion  in  the 
case  of  Tacna  and  Arica  in  South  America. 
The  Conference  broke  up  in  the  main  over  the 
Counties  of   Fermanagh  and  Tyrone.     Both 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  HOME  RULE      49 

sides  claimed  them.  In  agreeing  to  exclude 
even  temporarily  any  part  of  Ireland,  Mr.  Red- 
mond had  strained  the  loyalty  of  his  party 
to  breaking  point  and  he  dared  go  no  further. 
On  their  side,  the  Orangemen  were  openly 
desirous  of  wrecking  the  whole  Act. 

It  is  doubtless  a  fact  that  the  Ulstermen  were 
assisted  by  allies  in  England  among  the  older 
Conservatives.  Just  as  the  Nationalists  were 
using  the  Liberal  and  Labour  parties,  so  the 
Orangemen  were  using  whatever  friends  they 
could  find.  But  the  root  fact  in  the  situation 
was  the  division.  It  was  a  division  not  in 
England  but  in  Ireland.  The  arming  of  Ulster 
may  have  been  right  or  wrong,  it  may  have 
been  mere  bluff  or  a  serious  threat.  I  will  say 
something  more  about  it  a  little  later.  But 
it  was  at  least  an  evidence  that  politically 
Ulster  was  as  zealous  on  one  side  as  the  other 
parts  of  Ireland  were  zealous  on  the  other  side. 
Those  conflicting  zeals  were  not  England's 
fault.  John  Knox  who  founded  the  Presby- 
terianism  of  Ulster  as  of  other  countries  was 
not  an  Englishman.  St.  Patrick  who  founded 
the  Catholicism  of  Ireland  was  also  not  an 


50  THE   IRISH   CASE 

Englishman,  at  any  rate  of  recent  extraction. 
The  sermons  on  one  side  and  the  other  which 
rent  Ireland  in  twain  were  not  preached  by 
Englishmen. 

Addressing  audiences  as  I  am  sometimes 
asked  to  do,  I  never  touch  on  Ireland  without 
having  some  Irishmen  on  one  side  or  the  other 
coming  up  to  me  and  telling  me  that  I  have 
failed  to  express  his  feelings  as  a  partisan. 
Catholics  and  Protestants  say  this  to  me,  and 
for  this  reason — my  attitude  is  the  detached 
attitude  of  the  great  body  of  the  British  people. 

In  August,  1914,  the  Irish  Parties  were  so 
utterly  at  variance  that  by  common  consent, 
it  was  decided  to  suspend  the  Home  Rule  Act 
until  the  war  should  be  over.  This  was  no 
perfidy  on  the  part  of  Britain.  The  Irish  dif- 
ferences were  carried  into  the  Army  itself  and 
it  was  held  that  you  could  not  ask  soldiers  to 
go  into  battle  and  die  together,  when  bitter 
controversies  were  raging  among  their  friends 
at  home.  Of  course  this  argument  did  not 
move  the  Sinn  Feiners  who  wanted  Germany 
to  win  the  war  and  said  so  openly.  But  the 
rest  of  us  may  be  permitted  to  take  the  view 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  HOME  RULE      51 

that  the  urgency  of  the  war  justified  an  ar- 
rangement of  pohtlcs  in  Ireland  which  country- 
lay  safe  behind  the  guns  of  the  British  fleet 
and  would  take  no  kind  of  harm  from  a  delay 
during  which  no  Irishman  was  compelled  to 
strike  a  blow  for  freedom  except  by  his  own 
free  will. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  Home  Rule 
Act  was  a  failure.  From  the  Nationalist  stand- 
point, this  is  untrue.  They  accepted  the  Act 
and  were  satisfied  with  it.  They  agreed  that 
Britain  had  done  the  just  and  right  thing. 
They  said  so  everywhere.  The  Act  redeemed 
every  promise  that  had  ever  been  made  whether 
to  Parnell  or  to  Redmond.  If  the  Act  was 
postponed,  it  was  merely  to  prevent  civil 
trouble  within  Ireland  herself. 

For  the  moment  I  will  only  record  the  fact 
that  in  the  Easter  of  191 5  the  Germans  suc- 
ceeded in  stirring  up  what  has  been  called 
somewhat  excitedly  the  Easter  Rebellion,  which 
continued  for  a  day  or  two  but  was  not  more 
serious  intrinsically  than  certain  negro  riots  of 
a  recent  date  elsewhere.  Immediately  after 
the  Rebellion,    Great    Britain    came    forward 


52  THE  IRISH  CASE 

again  as  conciliator  and  sought  to  gather  the 
various  factions  of  Ireland  into  one  family. 
An  Ireland,  united  and  peaceful  under  her  own 
institutions,  was  the  British  policy,  then  as  at 
any  time  for  many  years.  A  Convention  was 
therefore  called. 

It  was  to  be  a  purely  Irish  Convention.  It 
was  to  sit  in  Ireland.  It  was  to  be  presided 
over  by  an  Irishman,  Sir  Horace  Plunkett, 
whose  life  had  been  devoted  to  restoring  the 
industries  and  the  agriculture  of  Ireland.  The 
British  Chief  Secretary  was  only  to  have  a 
seat  in  the  Convention  as  the  medium  for  giv- 
ing information  on  the  many  constitutional  and 
economic  points  that  would  arise.  The  whole 
main  task  of  getting  Irishmen  to  sit  in  the 
same  room  together  was  performed  by  British 
peacemakers. 

When  the  Convention  was  called,  the  Sinn 
Feiners  were  not  only  invited  to  attend,  but 
they  were  begged  to  come  and  put  their  ideas 
into  the  common  stock.  They  were  not  asked 
to  deal  with  the  tyrannical  Englishman  but 
with  their  fellow  Irishmen.  When  they  were 
invited,  it  was  known  perfectly  well  that  they 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  HOME   RULE       53 

had  been  plotting  with  the  Germany  of  the 
Kaiser  which  was  at  that  very  moment  behav- 
ing with  inconceivable  cruelty  in  Belgium  and 
other  countries.  Yet  this  damning  fact  was 
overlooked  and  the  right  hand  was  extended 
to  these  men  who  had  been  asking  all  along 
for  the  Irish  question  to  be  settled  in  Ireland 
rather  than  at  Westminster.  In  calling  the 
Convention,  Britain  was  taking  the  Sinn 
Feiners  at  their  word,  and  with  what  result? 
The  friends  of  De  Valera  were  not  out  for 
settlement.  It  was  their  business  to  get  up 
trouble  and  they  stood  as  completely  aloof  from 
the  Convention  in  Dublin  as  they  are  now 
standing  aloof  from  the  Parliament  at  West- 
minster. They  wanted  to  talk  and  agitate, 
conspire  and  plot  and  boycott,  but  they  did  not 
want  to  take  responsibility.  They  were  part 
of  a  larger  game.  That  game  would  have 
been  spoilt  if  the  Convention  had  succeeded. 
Ireland  was  merely  a  pawn  in  that  game. 

The  extremists  on  one  side  were  answered 
by  the  extremists  on  the  other.  Sinn  Fein  and 
Orangemen  each  played  into  the  hands  of  the 
other.     While   Sinn  Fein   was  pulling  every 


54  THE   IRISH   CASE 

wire,  both  in  Ireland  and  in  the  United  States, 
to  wreck  the  Convention,  the  Orangemen  were 
gradually  mobilising  their  forces.  The  Report 
of  the  Convention  was  not  unanimous  and  the 
dissentients  appealed  to  British  Toryism.  Mr. 
Asquith  was  then  at  the  head  of  a  Coalition 
Government  and  he  was  confronted  by  the 
most  appalling  crisis  that  humanity  has  ever 
had  to  face.  Thinking  of  themselves  alone, 
it  did  not  matter  to  the  Sinn  Feiners  at  all 
if  Rumania  was  overrun  and  Serbia  struck 
down  and  Russia  convulsed  and  Armenia 
cleared  of  Christians.  Paris  might  have  fallen 
and  Rome  been  sacked,  but  Sinn  Fein  would 
have  been  true  to  her  motto  "Ourselves  alone." 
Be  that  as  it  may,  Mr.  Asquith  undoubtedly 
saved  his  Cabinet  from  breaking  up  by  sur- 
rendering the  partial  settlement  that  had  been 
reached,  to  the  clamours  of  the  English  Tories 
who  were  acting  for  and  with  the  North  East- 
ern Ulstermen.  The  Nationalist  Party  re- 
ceived thereby  a  grave  blow.  But  what  com- 
plaint has  Sinn  Fein  to  make  ?  It  was  exactly 
the  situation  for  which  they  had  planned  and 
plotted  and  organised. 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  HOME  RULE      55 

If  the  Convention  had  succeeded,  Ireland 
would  have  been  peaceful  to-day,  and  one  result 
would  have  been  that  the  Anti-British  agitation 
in  the  United  States  would  have  been  deprived 
of  its  main  sustenance.  There  was  thus  a 
strong  trans-Atlantic  reason  why  it  must  not 
succeed.  The  Parliamentary  grievance  had 
become  for  many  people  more  valuable  than 
any  conceivable  remedy.  The  very  generosity 
of  the  Imperial  Parliament  meant  that  there 
was  no  longer  any  pressing  material  reason 
for  a  change.  Taking  the  benefits  while  con- 
tinuing the  grumble  was  like  getting  the  best 
of  both  worlds.  On  Saturday  night  the  old 
people  receive  their  pensions  on  every  note  of 
which  is  the  head  of  King  George  and  the  rest 
of  the  week  is  available  for  discussing  Ireland's 
wrongs.  Nor  does  the  pension  in  any  way 
interfere  with  Presidential  contests  elsewhere. 
There  is  thus  a  certain  unreality  in  the  position. 
I  have  been  much  impressed  by  the  curious 
perplexity  of  American  journalists  who  visit 
Ireland  and  are  unable  to  find  any  solution  for 
the  paradoxes  which  they  encounter. 


THE  LLOYD  GEORGE  SETTLEMENT 

I  "V  T  E  are  now  in  a  position  to  consider 
W  W  how  the  Irish  Question  stands  to- 
day. From  all  the  medley  of  often 
unreal  emotions  that  have  been  aroused,  there 
emerges  the  one  obvious  fact  that  Britain  has 
every  reason  whether  of  self-interest  or  of  im- 
perial necessity  to  settle  the  matter  here  and 
now.  If  the  problem  is  not  settled,  it  is  because 
powerful  political  forces  are  working  in  Ire- 
land and  elsewhere  to  prevent  a  solution  being 
reached.  It  is  not  a  question  of  Britain  ob- 
stinately refusing  to  give  Ireland  what  Ireland 
wants.  The  position  is  reversed  and  we  now 
see  Britain  thrusting  on  Ireland  liberties  and 
responsibilities  which  Ireland  finds  less  allur- 
ing, the  nearer  she  approaches  to  them. 

In  the  British  House  of  Commons,  there 
are  two  political  Coalitions  confronting  each 

56 


Sam:     if  you  need  assurance,   sir,  you   may  like  to   know 

THAT    you    have    THE    LOYAL    FRIENDSHIP    OF    ALL    DECENT    PEOPLE    IN 
OUR    COUNTRY. 


THE  LLOYD  GEORGE  SETTLEMENT     57 

other.  The  one  is  led  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
and  the  other  is  led  by  Mr.  Asquith.  Each  of 
these  statesmen  has  his  own  plan  for  dealing 
with  the  Irish  situation.  One  plan  may  be 
better  than  the  other  but  the  point  here  is  that 
Ireland  may  have  either.  It  is  really  no  use 
for  the  Irish  extremists  to  criticise  out  of  ex- 
istence first  the  Asquith  and  then  the  Lloyd 
George  policy  unless  they  have  a  plan  of  their 
own.  Nor  is  it  any  use  for  them  to  criticise 
details.  The  details  can  be  altered  and  have 
been  altered  times  without  number.  If  the 
spirit  is  not  right,  the  details  will  always  seem 
wrong.  It  is  no  use  for  the  critics  to  play 
off  the  Asquith  Plan  against  the  Lloyd  George 
Plan.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  is  the  kind  of  man 
w^ho  would  change  one  plan  for  the  other  if 
thereby  he  could  get  a  settlem.ent. 

I  will  begin  with  the  Asquith  Plan.  He 
says  that  the  Home  Rule  Act  being  on  the 
Statute  Book  should  be  brought  into  operation. 
He  admits  that  it  cannot  be  applied  to  Ulster 
without  modifications.  He  would  therefore 
give  to  each  Irish  county  an  option  to  remain 
out  of  the  Scheme  until  it  wants  to  come  Into 


58  THE   IRISH   CASE 

it.  Or  he  would  discuss  a  proposal  to  establish 
in  Ulster  a  Council  for  purely  Ulster  Affairs. 
Broadly,  then,  Mr.  Asquith  wants  Home  Rule 
on  Gladstonian  lines  with  concessions  to  Ulster. 

Mr.  Lloyd  George  prefers  a  new  measure 
entirely.  He  would  give  to  Ireland  not  one 
Parliament  but  two.  The  first  would  sit  in 
Dublin  and  the  second  in  Belfast.  The  first 
would  represent  the  South  and  West  of  Ireland 
which  is  mainly  agricultural  and  Catholic  while 
the  second  would  represent  the  Protestant  in- 
dustries of  the  North.  These  two  Parliaments 
would  each  select  ten  men  who  Avould  sit  to- 
gether on  a  central  body  and  adjust  matters 
between  the  neighbouring  legislatures.  The 
Parliaments  would  have  liberty  to  unite  and 
establish  the  one  and  indivisible  Ireland  which 
is  the  aim  of  modern  British  statesmanship. 

The  plans  have  been  called  two  Councils 
under  a  Parliament  or  two  Parliaments  under 
a  Council.  The  advantage  enjoyed  by  the 
Prime  Minister  is  that  he  is  in  power  with 
a  solid  Parliament  at  Westminster  behind  his 
policy  of  pushing  through  his  scheme  without 
delay. 


THE  LLOYD  GEORGE  SETTLEMENT     59 

If  Britain  lived  under  a  written  Constitution 
like  that  of  the  United  States,  these  plans  might 
be  open  to  grave  objection  as  a  permanent  set- 
tlement. But  they  are  not  to  be  regarded  as 
the  last  word  on  Ireland,  if  ever  there  will 
be  such  a  last  word.  They  can  and  they  will 
be  amended  as  experience  reveals  improve- 
ments which  may  be  made.  The  mere  fact  that 
Ireland  is  to  have  two  Parliaments  of  her  own 
does  not  mean  that  her  voice  is  to  be  silenced 
at  Westminster.  She  will  still  enjoy  the  right 
in  the  Imperial  Parliament  to  more  than  forty 
seats.  Her  statesmen  will  still  be  eligible  for 
and  invited  into  the  inner  counsels  of  the  Brit- 
ish Empire.  No  grievance  of  Ireland  will  lack 
ample  ventilation. 

Ulster  has  accepted  the  Lloyd  George  Plan. 
She  has  reached  this  decision  reluctantly  but 
she  has  at  last  got  there.  This  means  that  with 
the  Bill  on  the  statute  book,  there  is,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  a  Parliament  in  Belfast. 

In  the  South  and  West  of  Ireland,  it  is  hoped 
that  a  similar  result  will  follow.  Given  a 
Parliament  actually  in  being  at  Dublin,  it  is 
scarcely  conceivable  that  the  Nationalist  areas 


6o  THE  IRISH  CASE 

as  they  used  to  be  called  will  stand  aloof.  They 
vote  for  their  County  Councils  and  their  City 
Corporations  and  they  also  vote  for  their  mem- 
bers to  sit  in  the  House  of  Commons  at  West- 
minster. It  is  a  fair  prophecy  that  they  will 
vote  for  the  Dublin  Parliament. 

When  the  Parliaments  meet,  each  will  dis- 
cover that  there  are  many  other  problems  in 
Ireland  beside  the  old  and  outworn  quarrel 
with  England.  It  is  very  unlikely  that  we 
shall  see  a  solid  body  of  Catholics  confronting 
a  solid  body  of  Protestants.  Both  in  Ulster 
and  in  the  rest  of  Ireland,  there  will  be  cer- 
tainly a  Labour  Group.  In  the  recent  municipal 
elections,  that  group  as  we  have  seen  had  al- 
ready become  formidable.  At  present  it  is 
divided.  When  the  Irish  Trade  Union  Con- 
gress called  out  the  entire  organised  trades  of 
the  country  on  a  general  strike  in  favour  of  the 
Sinn  Fein  prisoners  in  Dublin,  not  a  man  in 
Belfast  downed  tools.  With  all  the  authority 
of  the  Federation  behind  the  strike,  Ulster 
stood  aside  because  Ulster  utterly  disapproved 
of  the  reason  for  the  stoppage.  But  when  the 
issue  of  independence  is  out  of  the  way,  the 


THE  LLOYD  GEORGE  SETTLEMENT     6i 

influence  of  Labour  will  tend  in  the  direction  of 
the  united  Ireland  which  Britain  is  working  to 
secure. 

Again,  the  old  division  will  be  mitigated  by 
a  common  postal  and  pension  system  and  by 
the  common  system  of  land  purchase.  Just  as 
the  middle  western  states  in  America  sell  food 
to  the  eastern  states  and  receive  manufactures 
in  exchange,  so  do  the  agricultural  parts  of 
Ireland  trade  with  Belfast.  Not  alone  do  Dub- 
lin Banks  serve  the  South  and  West;  Belfast 
Banks  also  have  branches  all  over  Ireland  and 
thus  form  another  link. 

Ulstermen  fear  that  the  Parliament  at  Dub- 
lin will  simply  set  up  a  Republic  and  make  more 
trouble  than  ever.  I  doubt  whether  this  will 
be  the  case.  The  old  Nationalists  were  divided 
into  Liberals  under  Dillon  and  Clericals  under 
Healy.  There  will  be  similar  divisions  in  the 
days  to  come.  And  they  will  be  healthy  in 
every  way.  The  chief  issue  will  be  the  control 
of  the  common  schools  about  which  we  must 
expect  a  lively  controversy  among  Catholics 
themselves. 

In  the  case  of  the  United  States,  there  was 


62  THE  IRISH  CASE 

great  difficulty  at  first  in  the  way  of  getting 
the  original  thirteen  colonies  to  form  one  federal 
government.  But  in  the  end,  it  was  done.  Canada 
also  had  her  troubles  and  to  this  day,  New- 
foundland stands  outside  the  Dominion  which 
includes  nine  provinces  every  one  of  which 
joined  the  others  by  its  own  free  consent.  In 
the  case  of  South  Africa,  also,  the  Union  was 
threatened  by  the  dissent  of  Natal,  which  was 
the  Ulster  of  that  great  country.  But  even 
Natal  was  won  for  the  Union  and  came  in, 
moved  by  no  force  save  the  force  of  persua- 
sion. In  Australia  the  dissentient  was  New 
South  Wales.  But  here  once  more  the  great 
argument  prevailed.  I  do  not  doubt  that,  under 
the  present  scheme,  we  shall  see  before  long 
Ireland  united.  But  of  course  the  majority 
must  recognise  that  there  can  be  no  question  of 
paying  off  old  scores  against  the  minority. 
There  must  be  a  general  amnesty  to  the  ancient 
feuds. 

For  myself,  I  say  frankly  that  I  see  no  rea- 
son in  the  world  why  Ireland  should  not  be 
included  in  the  League  of  Nations.  England 
and  Scotland  and  Wales  have  one  vote  between 


THE  LLOYD  GEORGE  SETTLEMENT      63 

them  and  the  United  States  has  no  vote  at  all, 
so  that  if  Ireland  has  two  votes,  one  for  the 
South  and  West  and  the  other  for  Ulster,  I 
should  think  that  this  grievance  at  any  rate 
should  be  removed. 

And  lastly,  I  really  don't  very  much  mind 
if  in  parts  of  Ireland  they  fly  a  more  or  less 
green  flag.  Wales  has  a  big  red  dragon  on 
her  flag  and  so  has  Scotland  and  these  dragons 
seem  expressly  designed  to  insult  St.  George, 
the  Patron  saint  of  England,  who  I  understand 
was  once  prosecuted  for  profiteering,  though 
afterwards  he  received,  as  was  most  justly  due, 
a  title.  My  feelings  about  the  Union  Jack  are 
those  of  Stalky  and  Co.  in  Kipling's  story. 
I  w^ould  as  soon  wave  it  about  anywhere  and 
everywhere  as  I  would  wave  my  marriage  cer- 
tificate or  my  wife's  last  love  letter.  When  I 
see  the  Union  Jack,  it  does  not  make  me  want 
to  cheer.  I  would  as  soon  cheer  and  applaud 
the  Holy  Communion.  So  that  if  Irishmen 
do  not  want  to  wave  this  flag,  it  is  their  loss, 
not  mine.  I  am  glad  to  know  that  there  are 
few  homes  in  England  where  the  Stars  and 
Stripes  are  not  welcome.     But  one  thing  is 


64  THE  IRISH  CASE 

clear.  The  Sinn  Fein  extremists  must  not  try 
to  force  the  flag  which  they  have  adopted  upon 
Ulster.  That  is  the  real  issue  to-day.  Let 
them  advocate  Secession  for  themselves  if  they 
will.  The  answer  will  be  found  in  these  pages. 
But  to  try  to  force  Secession  on  Ulster  would 
be  as  unreasonable  as  it  would  be  for  the 
United  States  to  try  to  force  Secession  on  the 
Dominion  of  Canada. 


VI 

IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE? 

STANDING  at  the  Court  of  Public  Opin- 
ion in  America,  I  have  dealt  hitherto 
only  with  the  grievances  of  Ireland.  My 
submission  has  been 

First,  that  Catholic  Disabilities  under 
the  Penal  Laws  have  been  transformed 
into  Catholic  privileges  in  the  Schools  and 
Universities; 

Secondly,  that  the  worst  Land  System 
in  Europe  has  been  transformed  into  the 
best  and  at  the  cost  of  the  British  investor; 

Thirdly,  that  the  overtaxation  of  Ire- 
land has  been  reversed  into  undertaxation ; 

And  fourthly,  that  the  refusal  by  Bri- 
tain to  restore  the  Parliamentary  institu- 
tions of  Ireland  has  been  changed  into  a 
determination  that  such  institutions  shall 
65 


66  THE   IRISH   CASE 

be  set  up  in  Ireland,  whatever  be  the  hos- 
tiHty  of  those  who  wish  to  keep  the  old 
quarrels  alive. 

But  I  admit  that  the  Case  is  still  incom- 
pletely handled.  Ireland  has  not  only  griev- 
ances but  hopes,  and  while  the  removal  of 
grievances  is  much,  there  can  be  no  tranquillity 
until  her  hopes  are  satisfied. 

We  often  hear  it  said  that  the  trouble  with 
Ireland  is  spiritual  and  this  is  true.  The  trouble 
with  Mexico  is  also  spiritual.  Yet  Mexico  is 
not  oppressed  by  Britain.  There  is  a  trouble 
of  the  spirit  that  goes  far  beyond  the  region 
of  politics.  And  sometimes,  I  have  thought 
that  Irishmen  have  expected  of  Britain  what 
they  can  only  get  from  God.  A  man*s  happi- 
ness, after  all,  depends  on  other  circumstances 
than  the  sovereignty  under  which  he  lives. 
Even  in  the  United  States,  which  is  guided 
by  the  wisdom  of  Congress,  men  and  women 
sometimes  talk  as  if  they  were  not  entirely 
happy. 

The  expression  of  di^scontent  in  Ireland  is 
called  Sinn  Fein.     The  origin  of  this  move- 


IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE?      67 

ment  was  literary  and  artistic  rather  than 
political,  one  object  being  to  restore  the  use 
of  the  Erse  language.  The  movement  was 
particularly  popular  with  young  College  men, 
educated  in  Ireland's  developed  universities, 
who  saw  no  reason  for  emigrating  to  the 
United  States.  No  one  will,  I  think,  deny  that 
the  lapse  of  languages  like  Gaelic  and  Welsh 
and  Erse  and  Breton  and  Red  Indian  dialects, 
is  a  sacrifice  of  the  picturesque  to  the  practical. 
But  in  the  United  States,  what  is  called  Ameri- 
canism means  in  the  main  the  insistence  of  the 
authorities  upon  the  knowledge  by  all  citizens 
of  a  common  language  and  while  in  Canada, 
the  use  of  French  is  guaranteed  to  Quebec,  it 
is  by  no  means  certain  that  the  French  Cana- 
dians have  been  wholly  benefited  by  their 
linguistic  severance  from  the  rest  of  North 
America.  Be  that  as  it  may,  no  objection  of 
any  kind  has  ever  been  made  by  Britain  to 
Irishmen  talking  or  teaching  any  language  they 
like,  whether  any  one  understands  it  or  not. 

This  toleration  left  Sinn  Fein  with  nothing 
to  protest  against.  But  when  Mr.  Redmond 
accepted  the  Home  Rule  Acts  of  Mr.  Asquith, 


68  THE  IRISH  CASE 

an  issue  was  provoked  by  the  Clan-na-Gael 
of  the  United  States  which  cabled  over  the 
strongest  messages  of  dissent.  Gradually,  the 
Sinn  Fein  Movement  which  had  been  an  asser- 
tion of  Ireland's  independence  of  the  mind, 
developed  into  a  political  association,  leagued 
with  the  relics  of  Fenianism  and  with  the  most 
violent  section  of  Labour,  as  led  by  men  like 
Jim  Larkin,  now  sentenced  in  the  United  States 
for  criminal  Anarchy. 

The  phrase  Sinn  Fein  means  "ourselves 
alone"  and  this  is  one  of  the  few  occasions 
in  history,  and  perhaps  the  only  one  in  which 
a  movement  professing  to  be  generous  and 
democratic  has  adopted  as  its  slogan  the  watch- 
word Selfishness.  The  demand  for  an  Irish 
Republic  is  confined  to  the  group  which  has 
thus  proclaimed  Selfishness  to  be  the  supreme 
virtue. 

Pursuant  of  their  policy  of  thinking  only 
of  themselves,  the  Sinn  Fein  leaders  threw 
themselves,  as  we  have  seen,  heart  and  soul 
into  the  work  of  securing  the  triumph  of  Ger- 
many over  any  small  nation  like  Belgium  or 
Serbia  or  Rumania  or  Poland  which  did  not 


IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE?      69 

happen  to  be  Ireland.  The  Irishmen  who  were 
dying  for  the  cause  of  liberty — men  like  Tom 
Kettle  and  Willie  Redmond — were  denounced 
and  misrepresented  and  hounded  as  far  as  pos- 
sible out  of  political  life,  for  no  other  reason 
except  that  they  were  fighting  a  noble  and  un- 
selfish battle  instead  of  fighting  for  Sinn  Fein 
or  themselves  alone. 

In  the  Election  of  19 18,  many  Sinn  Feiners 
were  elected  to  the  British  House  of  Commons. 
That  was  the  tribunal  where  first  they  should 
have  advanced  their  claim  for  an  Independent 
Irish  Republic.  In  the  forms  of  the  House, 
there  was  nothing  to  prevent  the  proposition 
being  debated.  The  Independence  of  Ireland 
could  have  been  expressed  in  the  terms  of  a 
Resolution  and  if  that  had  been  approved  em- 
bodied in  an  Act  of  Parliament.  But  of  course 
the  Sinn  Feiners  would  have  had  to  lay  their 
cards  on  the  table.  They  would  have  had  to 
meet  the  millions  of  Irishmen  at  home  and 
abroad  who  do  not  accept  their  leadership.  And 
they  therefore  decided  that  it  would  be  more 
prudent  to  assemble  at  Dublin  all  by  themselves 
and    adopt    a   Declaration    of    Independence, 


70  THE  IRISH  CASE 

which  would  do  admirably  for  American  con- 
sumption. 

On  the  2 1st  of  January,  19 19,  the  Dail 
Eireann  or  Parliament  of  Ireland  approved  the 
following  document: 

"Whereas  the  Irish  people  is  by  right  a  free 
people,  and  whereas  for  seven  hundred  years 
the  Irish  people  has  never  ceased  to  repudiate 
and  has  repeatedly  protested  in  arms  against 
foreign  usurpation; 

"And  whereas  English  rule  in  this  country 
is,  and  always  has  been,  based  upon  force  and 
fraud  and  maintained  by  military  occupation 
against  the  declared  will  of  the  people; 

"And  whereas  the  Irish  Republic  was  pro- 
claimed in  Dublin  on  Easter  Monday,  191 6, 
by  the  Irish  Republican  Army,  acting  on  behalf 
of  the  Irish  people ; 

"And  whereas  the  Irish  people  is  resolved 
to  secure  and  maintain  its  complete  inde- 
pendence in  order  to  promote  the  common 
weal,  to  re-establish  justice,  to  provide  for 
future  defence  to  insure  peace  at  home  and 
good  will  with  all  nations,  and  to  constitute 


IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE?      71 

a  national  policy  based  upon  the  people's  will, 
with  equal  right  and  equal  opportunity  for 
every  citizen; 

"And  whereas  at  the  threshold  of  a  new  era 
in  history  the  Irish  electorate  has  in  the 
General  Election  of  December,  1918,  seized  the 
first  occasion  to  declare  by  an  overwhelming 
majority  its  firm  allegiance  to  the  Irish  Re- 
public ; 

"Now,  therefore,  we,  the  elected  Representa- 
tives of  the  ancient  Irish  people,  in  National 
Parliament  assembled,  do,  in  the  name  of  the 
Irish  Nation,  ratify  the  establishment  of  the 
Irish  Republic  and  pledge  ourselves  and  our 
people  to  make  this  Declaration  effective  by 
every  means  at  our  command; 

"We  ordain  that  the  elected  Representatives 
of  the  Irish  people  alone  have  power  to  make 
laws  binding  on  the  people  of  Ireland,  and  that 
the  Irish  Parliament  is  the  only  Parliament 
to  which  that  people  will  give  its  allegiance; 

"We  solemnly  declare  foreign  government 
in  Ireland  to  be  an  invasion  of  our  National 
Right,  which  we  will  never  tolerate,  and  we 


72  THE  IRISH  CASE 

demand  the  evacuation  of  our  country  by  the 
English  garrison; 

"We  claim  for  our  national  independence 
the  recognition  and  support  of  every  free  na- 
tion of  the  world,  and  we  proclaim  that  inde- 
pendence to  be  a  condition  precedent  to  inter- 
national peace  hereafter. 

"In  the  name  of  the  Irish  people  we  humbly 
commit  our  destiny  to  Almighty  God,  who 
gave  our  fathers  the  courage  and  determination 
to  persevere  through  centuries  of  a  ruthless 
tyranny,  and  strong  in  the  justice  of  the  cause 
which  they  have  handed  down  to  us,  we  ask 
His  Divine  blessing  on  this  the  last  stage  of 
the  struggle  which  we  have  pledged  ourselves 
to  carry  through  to  Freedom." 

This  document  refers  inaccurately  to  Eng- 
lish Rule  in  Ireland.  When  it  was  issued,  the 
Viceroy  of  Ireland  was  Viscount  French,  an 
Irishman.  The  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland 
was  Mr.  MacPherson,  a  Scotsman.  His  suc- 
cessor is  Sir  Hamar  Greenwood,  a  Canadian. 
And  the  Prime  Minister  under  whom  thes^ 


IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE?      73 

men  were  serving  was  David  Lloyd  George,  a 
Welshman. 

With  regard  to  force  and  fraud,  I  can  best 
answer  the  Declaration  by  quoting  from  the 
speech  which  Mr.  John  Redmond  delivered  in 
Australia  in  19 15,  when  the  friends  of  Sinn 
Fein  were  trying  to  help  Germany  by  dis- 
couraging recruits  from  enlisting.  Mr.  Red- 
mond referred  to  his  previous  Australian  visit, 
and  said: 

"I  went  to  Australia  to  make  an  appeal  on 
behalf  of  an  enslaved,  famine-hunted,  despair- 
ing people,  a  people  in  the  throes  of  a  semi- 
revolution,  bereft  of  all  political  liberties  and 
engaged  in  a  life  and  death  struggle  with  the 
system  of  a  most  brutal  and  drastic  coercion. 
Only  thirty-three  or  thirty-four  years  have 
passed  since  then,  but  what  a  revolution  has 
occurred  in  the  interval.  To-day  the  people, 
broadly  speaking  own  the  soil;  to-day  the 
labourers  live  in  decent  habitations;  to-day 
there  is  absolute  freedom  in  local  government 
and  the  local  taxation  of  the  country;  to-day 
we  have  the  widest  parliamentary  and  munici- 


74  THE   IRISH  CASE 

pal  franchise ;  to-day  we  know  that  the  evicted 
tenants,  who  are  the  wounded  soldiers  of  the 
land  war  have  been  restored  to  their  homes 
or  to  other  homes  as  good  as  those  from  which 
they  had  been  originally  driven.  We  know 
that  the  congested  districts,  the  scene  of  some 
of  the  most  awful  horrors  of  the  old  famine 
days,  have  been  transformed,  that  the  farms 
have  been  enlarged,  decent  dwellings  have  been 
provided,  and  a  new  spirit  of  hope  and  inde- 
pendence is  to-day  amongst  the  people.  We 
know  that  the  towns  legislation  has  been 
passed  facilitating  the  housing  of  the  working 
classes.  So  far  as  the  town  tenants  are  con- 
cerned, we  have  this  consolation,  that  we 
passed  for  Ireland  an  Act  whereby  they  are 
protected  against  arbitrary  eviction,  and  are 
given  compensation  not  only  for  disturbance 
from  their  homes,  but  for  the  good  will  of 
the  business  they  had  created,  a  piece  of  legis- 
lation far  in  advance  of  anything  obtained  for 
the  town  tenants  of  any  other  country.  We 
know  that  we  have  at  last  won  educational 
freedom  in  university  education  for  most  of 
the  youth  of  Ireland,  and  we  know  that  in 


IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE?      75 

the  primary  and  standard  education  the  thirty- 
four  years  that  have  passed  have  witnessed 
an  enormous  advance  in  efficiency  and  in  the 
means  of  bringing  efficiency  about.  To-day 
we  have  a  system  of  old  age  pensions  in  Ire- 
land whereby  every  old  man  and  woman  over 
seventy  is  saved  the  workhouse,  free  to  spend 
their  last  days  in  comparative  comfort.  "We 
have  a  system  of  national  industrial  insurance 
which  provides  for  the  health  of  the  people 
and  makes  it  impossible  for  the  poor  hard- 
working man  and  woman,  when  sickness  comes 
to  the  door,  to  be  carried  away  to  the  work- 
house hospital,  and  makes  it  certain  that  they 
will  receive  decent  Christian  treatment  during 
their  illness." 

Born  and  bred  as  they  are  under  a  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  which  declaration  freed 
them  from  British  interference,  I  am  not  sur- 
prised that  many  Americans,  seeing  the  Irish 
so  stirred  up,  should  assume  as  a  matter  of 
course  that  there  ought  to  be  a  Republic  with 
a  capital  at  Dublin.  I  can  well  understand  why 
it  should  be  difficult  here  to  draw  a  distinction 


76  THE  IRISH  CASE 

between  President  Paderewski  of  Poland,  and 
President  Masaryk  of  Czecho  Slovakia  on  the 
one  hand  and  President  De  Valera  of  Ireland 
on  the  other.  If  one-tenth  of  what  is  said 
about  misrule  in  Ireland  were  true,  I  should 
say  myself  that  a  Republic  was  the  only  path- 
way to  deliverance.  But  neither  one-tenth  nor 
one-hundredth,  as  I  have  shown,  is  approxi- 
mating to  the  truth. 

The  first  objection  to  a  Republic  is  Ulster. 
If  Ireland  secedes  from  the  United  Kingdom, 
it  follows  as  the  night  follows  the  day  that 
North  East  Ulster  will  secede  from  the  United 
Ireland.  Every  Irishman  knows  this  to  be  a 
fact  and  it  is  mere  chicanery  to  blink  the  busi- 
ness. I  have  shown  how  the  Dissentient  vote 
in  South  Down  for  De  Valera  was  only  thirty 
out  of  about  nine  thousand.  A  Republic  in 
Dublin  means  two  Irelands,  as  distinct  from 
one  another  as  Sweden  is  distinct  from  Nor- 
way or  as  Belgium  is  distinct  from  Holland. 
If  Ireland  splits  from  England,  Ireland  splits 
herself. 

The  main  object  of  any  statesmanlike  policy 
for  Ireland  should  be  surely  to  draw  all  sec- 


IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE?      77 

tions  of  the  people  together  and  not  to  drive 
them  yet  further  asunder.  Sinn  Fein  has  pro- 
ceeded on  the  opposite  principle.  By  adopting 
a  flag  which  is  not  merely  green  but  also  Papal 
in  its  colouring,  a  challenge  to  the  death  has 
been  issued  to  Belfast  and  the  North.  And 
never  has  Ulster  been  more  thoroughly  aroused. 

The  second  objection  to  the  Irish  Republic 
is  Canada.  Ireland  lies  clean  between  the 
Dominion  and  Great  Britain.  If  De  Valera 
were  to  cross  the  Dominion  frontier,  he  would 
be  immediately  arrested.  Between  the  Irish 
and  French  Catholics  of  the  Dominion,  there 
is,  I  am  assured,  no  political  association.  The 
United  States  is  doubtless  aware  that  the  cam- 
paign against  Britain  which  is  raging  here  has 
had  the  effect  of  drawing  the  Dominion  of 
Canada  closer  to  the  Mother  Country,  as  al- 
ways, when  she  is  attacked. 

The  third  objection  is  fiscal.  If  Ireland  Is 
to  be  independent,  then  England  must  also  be 
allowed  her  independence.  If  Ireland  is  to  put 
on  tariffs  against  Great  Britain,  then  it  follows 
that  Great  Britain  must  have  the  right  to  put 
on  tariffs  against  Ireland.     I  do  not  suggest 


78  THE  IRISH  CASE 

that  Britain  would  ever  treat  Ireland  as  Serbia 
and  her  swine  and  pork  were  treated  by  Aus- 
tria Hungary.  But  Ireland  has  everything  to 
lose  and  nothing  to  gain  by  seeking  to  be  put 
outside  the  customs  union  which  gives  her  a 
free  market  at  her  very  doors.  It  is  all  very 
well  to  think  only  of  the  sentimental  side  of 
these  questions,  but  even  in  the  case  of  Cuba, 
there  were  some  very  pointed  negotiations  over 
the  admission  of  sugar  into  the.  United  States. 
And  the  Irish  farmer  would  soon  be  complain- 
ing in  real  earnest  if  Britain  were  to  take  the 
Sinn  Feiners  at  their  word  and  were  to  compel 
Ireland  to  depend  on  ''herself  alone." 

The  wording  of  the  Declaration  is  precise 
as  to  the  Independence  claimed.     It  is  to  be 

COMPLETE  INDEPENDENCE 

with  power  to  provide  for  future  defence.  In 
other  words,  Ireland  claims  the  right  to  main^ 
tain  her  own  Army  and  Navy  and  to  enter 
into  her  own  relations  with  Foreign  Powers, 
which,  as  in  the  case  of  Germany,  may  be  at 
the  moment  in  conflict  with  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States.    Ireland  is  thus  to  be  more 


IS  INDEPENDENCE   CONCEIVABLE?      79 

free  in  her  Foreign  Relations  than  Belgium 
under  her  Treaty  Guarantees.  There  is  not 
a  small  nation  in  Europe  that  in  fact  enjoys 
such  isolation  and  there  is  not  a  nation  any- 
where that  has  adopted  Selfishness  like  this 
as  its  national  virtue.  Nor  has  Ireland  en- 
dorsed the  Sinn  Fein  Claim.  Ireland  merely 
regards  it  as  an  amusing  gesture  of  impatience. 
When  a  man  says  damn,  he  does  not  really 
want  a  fellow  creature  to  go  to  the  nether  re- 
gions.    He  wishes  to  relieve  his  feelings. 

The  reason  why  Britain  will  never  consent 
to  such  a  Declaration  of  Independence  is  that 
Ireland  lies  between  the  Old  World  and  the 
New.  She  holds  the  key  to  the  trade  routes 
which  connect  the  whole  of  Europe  with  the 
whole  of  America  both  north  and  south.  The 
best  argument  possible  against  the  demand  of 
Sinn  Fein  is  the  conduct  of  Sinn  Fein  in  in- 
viting German  submarines  into  Irish  harbours 
at  a  time  when  those  submarines  were  being 
employed  against  the  shipping  of  every  mari- 
time power  in  both  hemispheres  and  not  least 
against  American  Shipping.  When  Sinn  Fein 
hooted  American  troops  and  sailors  and  the 


8o  THE  IRISH  CASE 

American  flag  in  the  streets  of  Cork,  we  saw 
a  symbolic  act  which  will  never  be  forgotten. 
The  American  Flag  was  at  that  time  being 
flown  over  the  British  Houses  of  Parliament. 
No  Power,  with  a  sense  of  responsibility  would 
be  worth  the  respect  of  its  neighbours  if  it 
were  to  surrender  the  strategic  centre  of  the 
modern  world  on  the  ocean  to  a  small  and 
divided  nation  in  which  there  was  an  active 
movement  afoot  to  employ  that  position  as 
a  means  of  pursuing  a  policy  of  confessed 
Selfishness  and  disregard  for  others.  No  one 
knows  this  better  than  Sinn  Fein.  The  object 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is  not  to 
win  assent.  It  is  a  document  drafted  for  re- 
fusal. It  is  intended  to  create  a  new  grievance 
in  place  of  the  others  that  have  been  removed. 
The  world  is  being  told  that  Ireland  will  never 
be  content  until  she  is  placed  in  a  position  on 
the  high  seas  to  starve  out  England.  This  is 
the  plain  truth  of  the  matter  and  the  only 
reason  for  the  demand  is  potential  revenge. 
We  have  seen  how  openly  the  Declaration  flouts 
the  sensibilities  of  Ulster  and  we  now  see  how 


IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE?      8i 

it  Is  a  calculated  threat  against  Britain,  France 
and  Western  Europe. 

In  the  case  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Aus- 
tralia, the  People  insisted  that  no  Islands 
should  be  in  the  hands  of  Germany  which 
might  and  therefore  would  be  used  in  the 
future  to  cut  off  the  Commonwealth  and  New 
Zealand  from  the  rest  of  the  world.  In  the 
case  of  the  Philippines,  there  was  only  the 
other  day  a  discussion  of  the  rumour  that  Japan 
was  fortifying  Islands  which  lie  between  the 
United  States  and  her  Dependency.  That  dis- 
cussion was  short  and  sharp. 

Some  little  time  ago,  De  Valera  indicated 
his  readiness  to  discuss  some  form  of  Cuban 
Home  Rule  or  independence.  He  was  promptly 
disavowed  by  his  Irish-American  friends  whose 
aims  did  not  include  a  settlement  of  the  Irish 
Question  on  any  lines  until  a  new  President 
had  been  elected  to  the  United  States.  But 
I  wish  to  say  at  once  that  British  Statesman- 
ship does  not  exclude  any  path  to  conciliation 
however  unlikely  its  route.  Even  Independence 
as  defined  by  Sinn  Fein  was  carefully  con- 


82  THE  IRISH  CASE 

sidered  by  the  British  Cabinet  before  it  was 
laid  aside. 

Cuban  Independence  is  defined  by  what  is 
called  the  Piatt  Amendment  passed  on  the  I2th 
of  June,  1901.  I  think  it  well  to  give  the 
terms  of  this  important  instrument  in  full: 

(i)  The  Government  of  Cuba  shall 
never  enter  into  any  Treaty  or  other  com- 
pact with  any  foreign  Power  or  Powers 
which  will  impair  or  tend  to  impair  the 
Independence  of  Cuba,  nor  in  any  way 
authorise  or  permit  any  foreign  Power 
or  Powers  to  obtain  by  colonisation  or 
for  naval  or  military  purposes,  or  other- 
wise, lodgment  or  control  over  any  por- 
tion of  said  island. 

This  clause  would  have  been  broken  in  the 
case  of  Ireland  by  the  invitation  to  Casement 
and  others  to  land  with  arms.  The  Clause  is 
manifestly  incompatible  with  the  terms  of  the 
Irish  Declaration  of  Independence. 

(2)  That  said  Government  shall  not 
assume  or  contract  any  public  debt  to  pay 


IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE?      83 

'  the  interest  upon  which,  and  to  make  rea- 
sonable sinking  fund  provision  for  the 
ultimate  discharge  of  which  the  ordinary 
revenues  of  the  Island  of  Cuba,  after  de- 
fraying the  current  expenses  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, shall  be  inadequate. 

This  clause  gives  to  the  United  States  an 
ultimate  control  over  the  finances  of  Cuba. 

(3)  That  the  Government  of  Cuba  con- 
sents that  the  United  States  may  exercise 
the  right  to  intervene  for  the  preservation 
of  Cuban  Independence,  the  maintenance 
of  a  Government  adequate  for  the  protec- 
tion of  life,  property,  and  individual 
liberty,  and  for  discharging  the  obliga- 
tions with  respect  to  Cuba  imposed  by  the 
Treaty  of  Paris  on  the  United  States,  now 
to  be  assumed  and  undertaken  by  the  Gov- 
ernment of  Cuba. 

This  clause  gives  to  the  United  States  the 
right  and  indeed  the  obligation  to  fulfil  pre- 
cisely those  duties  to  the  individual  which  are 
fulfilled  to-day  in  Ireland  by  the  British  au- 


84  THE  IRISH  CASE 

thority.  If  the  Island  of  Cuba  were  to  break 
up  into  two  factions  as  Ireland  is  broken  up, 
American  intervention  would  follow  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course. 

(4)  That  all  the  acts  of  the  United 
States  in  Cuba  during  the  military  occu- 
pancy of  said  island  shall  be  ratified  and 
held  as  valid,  and  all  rights  legally  ac- 
quired by  virtue  of  said  acts  shall  be  main- 
tained and  protected. 

In  other  words,  Cuba  must  not  complain 
if  the  United  States  finds  it  necessary  or  ex- 
pedient to  declare  and  administer  martial  law, 
as  in  Ireland. 

The  next  clause  deals  similarly  with  the 
duty  of  Cuba  to  apply  sanitation  in  her  cities, 
and  therefore  gives  the  United  States  a  locus 
standi  in  the  municipal  affairs  of  the  Island. 
Clause  VI  cuts  out  the  Isle  of  Pines  and  so 
defines  the  boundaries  of  Cuba  and  Clause  VII 
is  in  these  terms: 

To  enable  the  United  States  to  main- 
tain the  independence  of  Cuba,   and  to 


IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE?      85 

protect  the  people  thereof,  as  well  as  for 
its  own  defence,  the  Cuban  Government 
will  sell  or  lease  to  the  United  States  the 
lands  necessary  for  coaling  or  naval  sta- 
tions, at  certain  specified  points,  to  be 
agreed  upon  with  the  President  of  the 
United  States. 

In  respect  of  Cuba,  therefore,  the  United 
States  has  thus  not  only  the  right  of  military 
intervention,  virtually  when  she  pleases,  but 
the  right  of  permanent  naval  occupation  where 
she  pleases.  These  rights  are  exercised  by  the 
United  States  and  would  be  continued  as 
rights,  even  if  the  Cubans  objected.  Rights 
essentially  similar  are  imposed  by  the  naval 
and  military  forces  of  the  United  States  on 
the  Island  of  Haiti  and  Santo  Domingo.  For 
a  considerable  period,  the  Haitians  have  been 
under  arms  against  the  marines  of  the  United 
States  and  the  acting  President  of  the  Haitian 
Republic  is  an  Admiral  of  the  United  States 
Navy. 

In  the  attitude  of  the  United  States  there 
has  been  no  trace  of  hypocrisy.    When  Panama 


86  THE  IRISH  CASE 

was  wanted,  Panama  was  taken.  The  Canal 
was  fortified  and  there  was  the  end  of  it.  And 
in  the  terms  of  the  Piatt  Amendment,  the 
United  States  makes  it  perfectly  plain  in  the 
very  wording  that  the  object  of  the  military 
and  naval  provisions  is  ''its  own  defence/' 
Whose  defence?  Cuba's?  Not  at  all.  The 
phrase,  its  own  defence,  means  the  defence  of 
the  United  States.  Cuba  is  part  of  the  strategic 
system  on  which  the  United  States  is  to  base 
what  will  be  in  a  year  or  two  the  largest  Navy 
in  the  world. 

But  Cuba  does  not  lie  on  any  essential  trade 
route  to  or  from  the  United  States.  If  Cuba 
were  in  hostile  hands,  not  a  family  in  any 
American  city  would  have  to  go  on  the  rations 
that  my  family  suffered  in  Britain,  owing  to 
the  depredations  of  the  Irish — or  rather  the 
Sinn  Fein — assisted  submarines.  Cuba  does 
not  lie  at  the  throat  of  North  America.  If  the 
United  States  is  so  nervous  over  Cuba,  VN^hat 
would  she  feel,  if  one  night,  Cuba  were  super- 
imposed suddenly  on  Long  Island  and  were 
then  to  start  a  claim  for  absolute  independence  ? 
And  what  would  be  the  feelings — I  will  add  the 


IS  INDEPENDENCE   CONCEIVABLE?      87 

language  of  American  statesmen — if  with  the 
Catholics  of  Cuba,  just  outside  New  York  so 
agitating,  Great  Britain  were  to  receive  the 
President  of  the  Cuban  RepubHc  officially, 
were  to  supply  his  friends  with  funds  and  with 
rifles,  were  to  give  him  honorary  degrees  at 
the  Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  and 
the  Freedom  of  the  City  of  London,  and  were 
finally  to  pass  a  Resolution  in  the  House  of 
Lords,  with  the  assent  of  the  Foreign  Secre- 
tary, corresponding  in  that  body  to  Senator 
Lodge  in  Congress,  recognising  the  Republic 
of  Long  Island? 

Would  the  language  be  any  the  less  severe 
if  it  were  shown  in  addition  that  the  Sinn 
Feiners  of  Long  Island  had  been  arranging 
with  Germany  a  combined  operation  in  which 
they  were  to  run  a  rebellion,  while  German 
battleships  were  to  raid  Atlantic  City  as  they 
raided  the  East  Coast  of  England  and  while 
German  aircraft  were  to  raid  New  York  and 
drop  bombs  on  the  homes  of  the  people?  That 
was  what  happened  in  Easter  19 16  and  in  face 
of  it,  Britain  is  seriously  asked  by  representa- 
tive bodies  in  this  country  to  surrender  her 


88  THE  IRISH  CASE 

Long  Island  with  the  adjacent  waters  to  an 
Alliance  with — which  would  mean  the  Su- 
zerainty of — any  foreign  Power  who  at  the 
moment  might  be  most  anxious  to  starve  our 
people  into  submission. 

If  the  United  States  were  entirely  blockaded, 
she  would  not  be  vitally  inconvenienced.  She 
has  within  her  own  borders  all  the  food  and 
materials  essential  to  her  existence.  But  if 
Britain  were  blockaded,  she  would  cease  to  be. 
The  parallel  of  Long  Island  is  only  valid  to 
a  full  extent  if  you  assume  further  that  New 
York  State  and  Pennsylvania  and  Massachu- 
setts also  form  an  island,  with  the  rest  of  the 
American  mainland  in  the  hands  of  foreign 
and  possibly  hostile  Powers. 

But  the  United  States  goes  further.  It  is 
not  for  any  Englishman  to  object  to  the 
Monroe  Doctrine.  That  Doctrine  was  sug- 
gested to  the  statesmen  of  the  New  World  by 
a  British  Minister,  Canning,  and  was  defended 
in  Manila  Bay  by  a  British  Fleet,  at  what 
risk  we  now  know.  But  what  is  that  Doctrine  ? 
It  is  the  assertion  of  what  is  no  less  a  principle 
than  an  ultimate  political  suzerainty  by  the 


IS  INDEPENDENCE  CONCEIVABLE?      89 

United  States  over  the  entire  South  American 
continent.  If  North  Americans  do  not  realise 
this,  they  may  be  assured  that  South  American 
RepubHcs  are  fully  aware  of  the  position.  Of 
this  we  have  evidence  in  their  sensitive 
vigilance  when  the  United  States  intervenes 
however  gently  and  beneficently  to  ward  off 
trouble  between  Peru,  Chile  and  Bolivia  over 
Tacna  and  Arica.  If  there  is  to  be  a  Monroe 
Doctrine  to  link  Alaska  with  Cape  Horn,  is 
there  to  be  no  Monroe  Doctrine  to  link  Belfast 
with  Glasgow? 

That  concludes  my  main  argument  on  the 
question  of  Irish  Independence  but  I  think  that 
possibly  a  few  words  should  be  added  in  a 
new  chapter  on  the  right  of  a  population  to 
secede. 


VII 

IRISH  PROPAGANDA  IN  THE  UNITED 
STATES 

I  BEGAN  this  book  by  admitting — I  hope 
with  due  humiUty — that  the  great  case 
of  Ireland  versus  England  was  before  the 
Jury  of  Public  Opinion  in  the  United  States. 
Following  the  lead  of  Viscount  Grey  and  his 
successor  at  the  British  Embassy  in  Washing- 
ton, Sir  Auckland  Geddes,  I  did  not  attempt 
to  challenge  the  Jurisdiction  of  the  Court.  I 
took  it  for  granted  that  Ireland  is  an  inter- 
national question  and  that  the  United  States, 
containing  as  it  does  many  millions  of  Irish 
American  citizens,  would  be  particularly  in- 
terested in  its  solution.  All  that  I  have  asked 
is  that  the  United  States,  as  a  High  Court  of 
Conscience  on  the  conduct  of  Great  Britain 
should  hear  the  evidence  before  delivering  the 
Verdict. 

90 


IRISH   PROPAGANDA  IN  U.   S.      91 

As  a  detached  observer,  it  has  sometimes 
seemed  to  me  that  the  Irishman  who  becomes 
an  American  citizen  enjoys  especial  privileges 
over  others  amongst  whom  he  lives.  A  Ger- 
man is  told  that  he  must  be  one  hundred  per 
cent.  American.  He  must  even  fight  against 
his  fatherland  when  the  call  of  duty  comes. 
But  the  Irishman  who  is  naturalised  remains 
an  Irishman  none  the  less.  He  becomes  an 
excellent  citizen  in  the  country  of  his  adoption, 
running  the  cities  in  the  most  approved  style 
and  even  finding  time  for  charitable  organiza- 
tions like  Tammany  Hall  and  the  Knights  of 
Columbus.  But  he  is  still  a  part  of  the  Irish 
political  system. 

So  long  as  this  situation  helps  Ireland  on 
her  upward  path,  I  do  not  object  at  all.  Let 
us  always  hope  that  every  small  nation  will 
always  have  hosts  of  such  disinterested 
friends.  If,  however,  it  is  a  fact  that  the  Irish- 
American  is  actually  stirring  up  trouble  in  the 
old  country,  then  it  does  seem  as  if  some  ex- 
planation were  required. 

In  the  year  191 1,  a  Home  Rule  Bill  was 
brought  forward  by  the  British  Government 


92  THE   IRISH   CASE 

and  what  happened?  It  was  accepted  by  the 
Irish  NationaHst  leaders  who  represented  Ire- 
land, by  Mr.  Redmond  and  his  colleagues,  just 
as  it  would  have  been  accepted  by  Parnell,  had 
he  been  alive. 

But  the  American  Clan-Na-Gael  at  once  sent 
a  disapproving  telegram,  and  this  was  signed 
by  six  Judges  of  the  Supreme  Courts  of  New 
York  and  New  Jersey,  by  a  Governor  of  Rhode 
Island,  and  by  other  dignitaries.  I  do  not  my- 
self know  v/hat  is  the  character  of  the  Clan- 
Na-Gael  as  a  society  for  helping  on  human 
happiness  but  I  may  perhaps  quote  from  The 
Americana,  which  is,  I  believe,  the  latest  thing 
in  Encyclopedias  and  entirely  American  in 
origin. 

In  Volume  VII,  page  32,  I  read : 

''Clan-Na-Gael,  Irish  secret  society, 
founded  in  the  United  States  for  the  pur- 
pose of  aiding  in  securing  'Home  Rule' 
for  Ireland.  The  Society  has  been  charged 
with  some  grave  crimes,  said  to  have  been 
perpetrated  for  the  purpose  of  intimidating 
the  British  government;  but  so  little  is 


IRISH  PROPAGANDA  IN  U.   S.      93 

really  known  about  the  workings  of  the 
organisation  nothing  positive  can  be  as- 
serted." 

Now  if  the  Society  was  formed  to  help 
on  Home  Rule,  why  did  it  try  to  wreck  Home 
Rule  r  Were  there  men  who  feared  that  their 
occupation  would  be  gone  if  Home  Rule  were 
granted  and  is  this  a  reason  possibly  for  the 
increased  outcry  about  Ireland  that  arises  as 
the  project  of  Home  Rule  comes  nearer  to 
success?  Is  it  as  if  the  Anti  Saloon  League 
were  to  have  asked,  "Where  shall  we  be,  if 
and  when  the  Saloons  are  closed?" 

Do  the  Irishmen  in  the  United  States  really 
want  the  Irishmen  in  Ireland  to  obtain  satisfac- 
tion?   Sometimes,  I  doubt  it. 

When  that  Cablegram  was  sent,  Germany 
was  preparing  her  hardest  for  war.  She  was 
w^ell  represented  in  this  country  and  was  doing 
her  utmost  to  immobilise  both  Britain  and 
the  United  States.  A  settlement  of  the  Irish 
Question  would  of  course  have  interfered  very 
much  with  her  plans.  The  Kaiser  was  making 
every  possible  enquiry  how  the  various  parts 


94  THE   IRISH   CASE 

of  the  British  Empire  would  stand  in  the  event 
of  war.  He  was  lunching  with  Sir  Edward 
Carson  who  represented  the  Ulster  point  of 
view.  Was  it  wholly  in  the  interests  of  Ire- 
land and  freedom  and  humanity  and  the  United 
States  that  the  anti-Home  Rule  attitude  was 
taken  up  in  the  New  World  by  those  who  had 
always  been  Home  Rulers?  I  do  not  know. 
But  Americans  must  not  be  surprised  if  Eng- 
lishmen are  asking  the  question.  They  are 
puzzled. 

I  suppose  that  there  is  no  country  in  the 
world  that  has  done  more  than  the  United 
States  to  maintain  the  dignity  of  international 
law.  Living  under  a  written  constitution, 
American  citizens  feel  the  responsibility  of 
defending  scraps  of  paper  whenever  these  may 
be  torn  up  by  the  aggressor.  This  was  why 
many  Americans  sympathised  with  the  Cana- 
dians who  without  hesitation  threw  themselves 
into  the  fight  for  outraged  and  Catholic  Bel- 
gium. The  United  States  was  at  the  time  a 
neutral  and  the  question  does  arise  whether 
international  law  applies  to  American  citizens 
when  they  happen  to  be  of  Irish  extraction. 


IRISH  PROPAGANDA  IN  U.   S.      95 

Early  in  the  year  191 7,  a  book  was  pub- 
lished here,  entitled  "History  of  the  Sinn  Fein 
Movement  and  the  Irish  Rebellion  of  1916,"  by 
Francis  P.  Jones.  This  book  should  be  legally 
exact  and  proper  because  it  is  honoured  by 
an  introduction  by  one  of  the  most  eminent 
jurists  in  the  country,  that  is  Judge  Goff, 
understood  to  be  a  warm  supporter  of  the 
extreme  Irish  claim.  From  Chapter  XXXVIII, 
I  cull  the  following  sentences: 

Page  239: 

"Some  months  before  the  rising,  a  message 
was  despatched  to  Berlin  asking  for  arms,  and 
the  German  Government  made  the  necessary 
arrangements  to  comply  with  the  Irish  re- 
quest." 

Page  240: 

"Casement  was  trusted  implicitly  and  given 
plenipotentiary  powers  in  Germany  where 
diplomatic  relations  were  concerned." 

Page  241 : 

"All  that  Germany  was  asked  to  do,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  was  to  send  a  consignment  of 


96  THE  IRISH  CASE 

arms,  ammunition,  and  machine  guns,  and  that 
German  submarines  might  also  be  of  use." 

Page  242: 

"The  request  for  the  arms  from  Germany 
was,  in  the  first  place,  brought  to  New  York 
by  messenger,  since  direct  communication  be- 
tween Ireland  and  Berlin  was  impossible.  The 
fact  that  this  messenger  was  one  of  the  signers 
of  the  proclamation  of  the  Irish  Republic  is 
sufEcient  proof  of  his  truthworthiness.  This 
man  brought  the  message  to  New  York,  and 
it  was  then  referred  to  the  officials  of  the  Ger- 
man Government.  By  them  it  was  forwarded 
as  a  matter  of  course  to  Berlin.  Some  weeks 
later  the  officials  in  New  York  received  a  mes- 
sage from  the  Imperial  Government  to  the 
effect  that  the  arms  were  being  sent  from  Ger- 
many about  April  12th  and  would  be  due  in 
Ireland  about  Easter  Sunday." 

The  United  States  was  then  at  peace  with 
Britain.  She  was  in  fact  neutral.  Hundreds 
of  thousands  of  Irishmen  from  all  over  the 
world  were  fighting  for  Liberty  in  Belgium  and 


IRISH  PROPAGANDA  IN  U.   S.      97 

Serbia  and  in  Turkey.  What  exactly  will  be 
the  condition  of  this  troubled  planet  if  every 
country  allows  its  citizens  to  foment  civil  strife 
in  its  neighbour's  territory  ?  Why  should  there 
be  one  rule  for  the  Irish-American  and  another 
rule  for  the  rest  of  the  law-abiding  human 
race?  In  Britain,  we  also  have  judges,  and 
they  would  have  been  engaged  rather  in  sen- 
tencing to  punishment  any  British  subject  who 
endeavoured  to  compass  the  death  of  friendly 
nationals,  against  whom  the  country  had  not 
alleged  any  cause  of  quarrel,  much  less  de- 
clared any  kind  of  war.  No  country  is  more 
jealous  of  its  sovereignty  than  is  the  United 
States.  Is  it  just  that  the  United  States  while 
insisting  upon  its  own  rights  being  respected 
should  give  to  other  and  less  favoured  nations 
an  example  of  lawless  aggression?  And  how 
can  the  United  States  expect  its  own  laws 
to  be  respected  if  there  is  held  up  to  the  people 
an  object  lesson  like  the  above?  What  dis- 
tinction can  be  drawn  between  the  crime  com- 
mitted by  Zimmermann  when  he  sought  to  stir 
up  Mexico  against  the  United  States  and  the 
irregularity  of  any  American  citizen  however 


98  THE   IRISH   CASE 

learned  and  eloquent  trying  to  stir  up  civil  war 
in  the  United  Kingdom  ?  The  motive  of  course 
was  in  both  cases  the  same.  Germany  was  to 
retain  Belgium. 

This  is  a  purely  legal  matter.  If  it  was  right 
of  the  Sinn  Feiners  over  here  to  plot  as  the 
above  book  says  that  they  did,  then  there  is 
no  reason  why  any  Power  that  is  irritated 
with  the  United  States  should  not  return  the 
compliment.  Official  life  everywhere  can  be 
made  unbearable.  Given  money  and  a  secret 
society  and  a  mind  devoted  to  revenge,  it  can 
always  be  done.  You  can  buy  trouble  just  as 
you  can  buy  any  other  commodity.  There  are 
always  people  who  will  supply  it  at  a  price. 
But  what  the  world  would  be  like  when,  if 
ever,  the  rest  of  the  world  behaves  as  the  ex- 
treme Irish-Americans  behave,  I  can  only 
imagine  from  my  own  experience. 

I  remember  that  Easter.  At  the  time,  I  was 
living  in  England.  Our  district  was  crowded 
with  some  of  the  half  million  Catholic  Bel- 
gians whom  we  had  rescued  from  a  nameless 
fate.  I  had  one  in  my  house,  a  woman,  broken 
in  health,  and  separated  for  years  from  her 


IRISH  PROPAGANDA  IN  U.   S.      99 

husband.    We  had  regarded  Easter  as  a  sacred 
season  and  although  I  am  a  Protestant,  I  called 
on  the  Parish  priest  and  assured  him  that  I 
would  in  no  way  interfere  with  the  devotions 
of  our  refugee  but  would  carry  out  any  ar- 
rangement that  the  clergy  desired.    Bombs  fell 
around  us  that  Easter.     But  it  did  not  occur 
to  me,  I  confess,  that  this  festival  had  been 
selected   for  our  attempted  murder  by  vari- 
ous peoples   speaking  our  language,   also   at 
peace  with  us,  and  still  less  by  Catholic  friends. 
The  Irish  Rebellion,  the  bombing  of  London 
and  the  shelling  of  the  defenceless  watering 
places  on  the  East  Coast,  were  part  of  a  com- 
bined offensive,  which  included  ruthless  war- 
fare on  the  high  seas  and  Verdun.     What 
France  thinks  of  it  is  shown  in  the  fierce  in- 
dictment  of   M.    R.    C.    Escouflaire,   entitled 
"Ireland  an  Enemy  of  the  Allies.'*    M.  Escouf- 
laire would  doubtless  think  that  my  few  words 
on  the  matter  are  colourless  and  inadequate. 
The  fact  is  that  I  do  not  want  to  indict  Ireland. 
I  only  wish  to  suggest  that  the  Sinn  Feiners 
in  New  York  should  surely  have  considered 
*»very  alternative  before  allowing  their  cause 


loo  THE  IRISH  CASE 

to  be  stained  as  it  has  been  by  its  German 
association,  when  Germany  was  at  her  very 
worst. 

Then  as  now  an  election  was  pending  in  the 
United  States.  Then  as  now,  thoughtless  men 
were,  to  use  one  of  the  many  picturesque 
phrases  that  we  owe  to  the  wit  and  humour 
of  American  writers,  "playing  politics."  Now, 
playing  politics  may  be  as  innocent  a  pastime 
as  playing  baseball ;  but  it  depends.  No  coun- 
try has  a  moral  right  to  play  politics  at  the 
expense  of  its  neighbours.  Let  American 
Primaries  play  politics  over  Prohibition  or 
over  Women's  Suffrage  or  over  the  Plumb 
Plan  but  to  play  politics  over  an  air-raid  on 
a  friendly  nation,  to  play  politics  on  the  tor- 
pedoing of  merchantmen  on  the  high  seas,  to 
play  politics  over  a  rebellion  In  a  sovereign 
state  against  which  there  has  been  no  declara- 
tion of  war  or  even  diplomatic  protest,  is  trans- 
gressing the  rules  of  international  comity  and 
is  inviting  international  anarchy,  Germany 
herself  never  assumed  this  latitude.  And  no 
interference  by  Lenin  and  Trotsky  with  the 
internal  affairs  of  other  countries  has  been 


IRISH  PROPAGANDA  IN  U.  S.     loi 

more  explicit  or  irregular,  than  the  proceedings 
of  some  American  institutions  during  the  past 
half  dozen  years. 

It  is  no  part  of  my  case  that  the  Orangemen 
have  been  easy  to  handle.    Britain  has  had  just 
as  much  trouble  with  them  as  with  the  other 
side.     It  was  from  Ulster  that  there  came  in 
the  first  instance  an  appeal  to  force.     There 
were  Ulstermen  who  used  criminal  language 
about   preferring   Germany   to   a   Parliament 
duly  constituted  at  Dublin.     There  were  even 
German  weapons  found  in  Ulster  and  Ulster 
did  it  first.    It  was  the  example  of  Ulster  that 
led  Nationalist  Ireland  to  'Volunteer.'*     The 
treatment  of  the  Catholic  recruits,  the  disin- 
clination to  promote  Catholic  officers,  the  blank 
refusal  to  mention  Catholic  Regiments  and  the 
silly  objection  to  using  Irish  Nationalist  sym- 
bols on  the  uniforms  of  the  Regiments  which 
they  manned— all  these  were  blunders  which 
no  one  has  admitted  more  frankly  than  Mr. 
Lloyd  George.    They  were  due  to  the  prejudice 
of  the  British  War  Office  and  they  were  due 
especially    to    the    sheer    obstinacy    of    Lord 
Kitchener  who  had  all  the  pigheadedness  of 


I02  THE   IRISH   CASE 

a  very  great  man.  Every  one  of  these  matters 
was  dealt  with  in  the  British  ParHament  and 
the  British  ParHament  was  the  place  where 
they  should  be  dealt  with. 

But  you  must  remember  that  we  were  at 
war.  Has  the  United  States  realised  in  the 
least  what  it  was  for  a  country  of  the  size  and 
population  of  Britain  to  raise,  equip  and  sup- 
port on  distant  battlefields  armies  of  six  and 
one-half  million  men?  We  could  not  simply 
think  of  Ireland  as  if  Ireland  were  the  only 
country  in  the  world. 


VIII 

THE  DISORDERS  IN  IRELAND 

I  HAVE  now  to   deal   fairly  and   frankly 
with  the  charge  that  Great  Britain  is  com- 
mitting horrible  outrages  in  Ireland.     On 
this  matter,  my  position  is  this: 

I  believe  that  there  are  only  two  ways  of 
governing  an  English  Speaking  Country.  You 
must  either  have  a  Parliament  or  you  m_ust 
have  an  Arm.y.  I  am  for  a  Parliament.  And 
I  am  against  such  use  of  an  Army. 

The  American  Clan-na-Gael  says  that  no 
Parliament  is  possible  unless  Ireland  is  totally 
independent.  By  imposing  such  a  condition, 
it  makes  a  Parliament  difficult  to  establish  and 
so  prolongs  the  rule  of  the  Army.  The  object 
seems  to  be  to  keep  Ireland  under  an  Army 
and  therefore  discontented.  Then  there  will 
continue  to  be  a  case  against  England. 

Now  I  am  prepared  to  do  two  things — either 
103 


104  THE   IRISH   CASE 

one  or  the  other.  Here  on  my  desk  lie  the 
materials  for  some  very  lurid  writing.  Part 
of  this  matter  comes  from  the  British  Press 
and  deals  with  events  in  Ireland.  The  Daily 
News  itself  has  dealt  very  faithfully  with  the 
Coercion  of  Ireland  by  Viscount  French. 

If  it  is  right  for  Americans  to  concentrate 
their  minds  on  these  incidents — the  searches 
of  dwellings  in  Fermoy  and  so  forth— -then  it 
is  right  for  English  people  to  concentrate  their 
minds  on  incidents  perhaps  more  numerous  and 
certainly  more  sensational,  namely  the  burning 
alive  of  American  citizens,  in  broad  daylight, 
and  without  punishment  of  the  perpetrators. 

Now,  I  can  tell  either  of  these  stories  or 
I  can  tell  both,  but  I  am  not  going  to  tell  one 
story  without  the  other.  I  am  not  going  to 
tempt  Americans  into  the  sad  predicament  of 
the  Pharisee  when  looking  askance  at  the  pub- 
lican, who  being  English  had  not  adopted 
Prohibition,  said:  "God,  I  thank  thee  that 
I  am  not  as  other  men  are  and  especially  this 
British  soldier  who  after  a  companion  had  been 
shot  in  cold  blood  going  to  Church  went  about 
the  place  searching  for  fire-arms." 


THE  DISORDERS  IN  IRELAND     105 

There  is  no  country  in  the  world  where  the 
law  is  enforced  on  occasion  more  fiercely  than 
in  the  United  States.  There  is  no  country  less 
inclined  to  put  up  with  insults  to  the  national 
flag  or  to  threats  on  the  national  unity.  There 
was  no  war  in  history  in  which  passion  ran 
higher  than  in  the  Civil  War  which  established 
the  union  of  the  American  Republic. 

There  are  certain  problems  which  every  na- 
tion must  solve  for  itself.  Even  in  the  United 
States  such  domestic  problems  are  numerous 
and  difficult.  Burning  down  police  stations 
and  tearing  up  income  tax  returns  are  not  acts 
which  in  themselves  entitle  to  sympathy  the 
desperate  extremists  who,  believing  themselves 
immune  from  punishment,  commit  them.  It 
may  be  that  such  acts  imply  terrorism  over 
other  less  vocal  and  more  law-abiding  people. 
There  is  a  contrast  between  the  deeds  of  the 
few  in  Ireland  and  the  votes  of  the  many. 

As  long  as  Ireland  was  being  denied  Home 
Rule  and  Land  Reform  and  so  on  I  confess 
frankly  that  I  was  one  who  had  a  good  deal 
of  secret  sympathy  with  her  various  cam- 
paigners, although  I  suppose  that  I  shall  lose 


to6  THE  IRISH  CASE 

what  little  reputation  I  still  possess  by  saying 
so.    But  that  position  is  now  changed. 

After  all,  war  is  war.  And  De  Valera  has 
declared  for  war.  And  in  this  unhappy  world 
you  cannot  have  it  both  ways.  You  cannot 
refuse  to  sit  in  the  House  of  Commons  after 
election  and  announce  a  Republic  and  shoot 
policemen  on  duty  and  raise  a  Rebellion  Loan 
and  then  whimper  because  someone  searches 
for  revolvers.  If  De  Valera  means  business, 
he  has  to  learn  that  Britain  also  means  busi- 
ness. If  he  is  merely  a  charlatan,  then,  what 
is  to  be  said  of  those  who  are  using  him  for 
their  ulterior  purposes? 

Let  us  suppose  that  the  Congressmen  of 
Ohio,  duly  elected  by  the  voters,  were  to  be 
influenced  by  the  general  wave  of  world  unrest 
and  were  to  refuse  to  take  their  seats  at  the 
Capitol  at  Washington.  Let  us  further  sup- 
pose that  they  met  in  a  room  and  accused 
the  United  States  of  force  and  fraud  and  de- 
clared their  independence.  Let  us  add  to  the 
picture  the  fluttering  of  their  own  flag  in  place 
of  the  Stars  and  Stripes.  Then,  put  in  a  few 
attempts  at  assassination  and  an  Independent 


THE   DISORDERS  IN   IRELAND     107 

Ohio  Loan  floated  in  London.  Are  you  quite 
certain  that  the  American  Doughboy  would 
under  those  interesting  circumstances  play  a 
more  polite  part  than  the  British  Tommy  plays 
in  Ireland?  At  Albany,  Five  Members  are 
excluded  apparently  because  they  belong  to  the 
International  Labour  Party,  whatever  that  may 
be.  When  King  Charles  tried  to  exclude  five 
of  our  members  from  Westminster,  we  cut  off 
his  head.  What  would  be  done  here  if  mem- 
bers were  deliberately  raising  the  country 
against  the  Federal  Authority?  Would  there 
be  much  worry  if  in  prison  they  went  on 
hunger  strike?  And  in  London,  you  had  the 
extraordinary  spectacle  of  the  police  defending 
an  Irish  Sinn  Fein  meeting  from  the  populace 
on  the  ground  that  free  speech  even  against 
the  King's  own  sovereignty  must  be  safe- 
guarded ! 

War  is  war  and  I  am  not  surprised  that 
the  Irish  in  the  United  States  or  some  of  them 
are  trying  to  include  in  their  strategy  the  battle- 
fields of  India  and  Persia  and  Egypt.  The 
British  Empire  is  far  too  big  nowadays  to  be 
in  a  position  to  complain  of  the  attention  de- 


io8  THE  IRISH   CASE 

voted  to  its  problems  by  the  steadily  expanding 
United  States.  There  must  be  points  of  con- 
tact multiplying  everywhere.  But  let  me  say 
this.  Britain  is  doing  what  she  can  to  solve 
in  these  countries  the  most  difficult  problem 
ever  undertaken  by  modern  statesmanship. 
This  problem  is  none  other  than  the  introduc- 
tion of  western  ideas  of  liberty  into  the  eastern 
mind  and  the  eastern  societies.  Millions  of 
men  and  women,  indeed  hundreds  of  millions, 
who  have  their  own  lives  to  live  and  care  noth- 
ing for  the  party  politics  whether  of  the  United 
States  or  of  Britain  will  owe  the  happiness  or 
the  misery  of  generations  to  the  spirit  now  dis- 
played towards  their  institutions.  Let  the 
United  States  study  the  question.  If  Britain 
fails  over  it,  the  United  States  will  have  to 
solve  it  in  years  to  come.  But  there  is  all  the 
difference  between  study  and  incendiarism. 
For  responsible  American  Citizens  to  aid  and 
abet  revolution  in  Ireland  is  improper.  For 
them  to  aid  and  abet  revolution  in  India  in 
order  to  force  England's  hands,  as  they  think, 
in  Ireland,  is  surely  worse  than  a  mere  im- 
propriety.    With  regard  to  India  and  similar 


THE  DISORDERS  IN  IRELAND     109 

countries,  there  are  two  consistent  policies  and 
only  two  for  the  United  States  to  pursue,  and 
the  first  Is  to  take  a  mandate,  say,  over  Turkey ; 
while  the  second  Is  to  keep  silent  while  others 
act  as  mandatory.  To  refuse  responsibility 
while  continuing  to  criticise  Is  merely  to  add  to 
the  dangers  and  troubles  of  a  perilous  time 
without  making  a  contribution  to  their 
amelioration. 


IX 
THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION 

WHEN  a  man  owes  the  better  part  of 
himself  to  another  country,  and  all 
that  makes  life  worth  living,  it  will 
be  readily  understood  that  he  has  no  desire 
to  deal  controversially  with  any  little  differ- 
ences that  may  arise  between  his  own  and  any 
section  of  his  wife's  people.  This  is  one  reason 
why  I  have  merely  proceeded  on  the  path  of 
fact  and  law,  of  a  fair  deal  both  for  Ireland 
and  for  England. 

In  the  year  1776  the  American  colonies 
seceded  from  the  British  Empire.  This  means 
that  there  is  undoubtedly  a  right  among  na- 
tions of  Secession.  The  Ten  Tribes  seceded 
from  Judah  and  Benjamin.  The  South  Ameri- 
can Republics  seceded  from  the  Latin  Mon- 
archies in  Europe.  And  the  Austro-Hungarian 
Empire  now  consists  entirely  of  Secessions. 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION     in 

But  there  is  also  a  right  to  refuse  Secession. 
Some  years  ago,  a  Breton  exile  in  London 
called  on  me  and  I  asked  him  why  he  did  not 
return  to  France.  The  reason  was  that  he 
belonged  to  a  Party  that  wants  an  independent 
Brittany  and  he  had  therefore  quarrelled  with 
the  French  Government.  He  was  in  fact  the 
De  Valera  of  the  Breton  National  Movement. 
Any  little  compliments  paid  by  Ireland  to  Eng- 
land were  colourless  beside  the  lurid  tributes 
which  this  man  paid  to  the  tyranny  of  Paris. 
Yet  no  one,  I  think,  would  suggest  that  it  would 
be  reasonable  to  expect  France  to  give  inde- 
pendence to  Brittany. 

The  right  to  refuse  Secession  like  so  many 
other  fundamental  political  principles  was  es- 
tablished by  the  genius  and  the  sacrifices  of 
the  United  States.  The  War  with  Britain 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century  was  a  serious  affair 
but  it  was  a  skirmish  compared  with  the  ter- 
rible Civil  War  which  followed  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century.  For  over  four  years,  the  Con- 
federacy fought  to  the  death  for  the  unre- 
stricted right  of  Secession  as  claimed  by  Ire- 
land or  rather  by  a  few  Irishmen  to-day.    The 


112  THE  IRISH  CASE 

Federal  authority  overcame  this  revolt  by 
methods  fully  as  severe  as,  and  incomparably 
more  costly  than  any  that  have  been  applied 
in  Ireland  since  the  Union. 

There  were  in  Britain  at  that  time  many 
men  who  agreed  with  Gladstone  that  Jefferson 
Davis  had  created  a  nation.  I  can  speak  with 
the  more  freedom  on  the  matter  because  the 
paper  which  I  represent  in  this  country,  The 
Daily  News  of  London,  which  Charles  Dickens 
had  just  founded  with  the  help  of  John  Bright, 
supported  the  policy  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
through  thick  and  thin,  when  most  journals 
went  the  other  way.  During  those  four  years, 
we  had  our  elections  and  the  Cotton  Famine 
in  Lancashire  made  the  Civil  War  a  grave  issue 
among  our  people.  For  the  starving  operatives 
who  stood  loyally  by  the  North  when  it  meant 
penury  to  do  so,  this  was  no  question  of 
speeches.  It  was  a  matter  of  bread  and  butter. 
Yet  during  the  whole  of  that  struggle,  the 
diplomacy  of  Britain  was  admittedly  irre- 
proachable except  in  one  particular.  This  was 
the  exploits  of  the  Alabama  and  for  these 
we  afterwards  apologised  and  paid  damages, 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION     113 

at  the  very  instance  of  Gladstone  who  had  at 
first  sympathised  most  strongly  with  the  South. 

The  .position  to-day  is  that  while  Great 
Britain  is  ready  and  eager  to  see  Ireland  accept 
all  that  Ireland  has  ever  asked  except  sovereign 
independence,  Great  Britain  says  what  Lincoln 
said  years  ago,  that  she  will  fight  rather  than 
concede  the  disunion  of  the  United  Kingdom. 
In  other  words  and  for  the  same  reason,  the 
unity  of  the  United  Kingdom  is  as  sacred  a 
thing  as  the  unity  of  the  United  States  is  sacred 
to  American  citizens.  If  we  «are  wrong,  then 
Lincoln  was  wrong.  We  simply  say  what  he 
said  that  the  United  Kingdom  cannot  be  a 
house  divided  against  itself. 

Indeed,  our  case  is  if  anything  the  stronger. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  North  was  forcing 
on  the  South  a  tremendous  social  change  and 
without  compensation.  In  every  matter  except 
independence  we  are  doing  exactly  what  our 
Irish  friends  are  asking  us  to  do.  So  far  from 
im.poverishing  Ireland,  Britain  is  as  I  have 
shown  doing  the  precise  opposite. 

Under  these  circumstances,  is  the  case  of 
Ireland  sufficiently  clear  to  warrant  American 


114  THE  IRISH  CASE 

intervention?  Sinn  Fein  says  "Yes.**  At 
Washington,  there  was  recently  a  deputation 
which  signalised  its  wisdom  by  giving  the  loud- 
est cheer  of  the  afternoon  to  talk  about  war 
with  England.  Of  course,  it  takes  two  to  make 
a  quarrel  and  Britain  does  not  intend  to  be 
one  of  them.  Her  answer  to  this  criminal 
language  is  to  reduce  her  Navy  to  a  standard 
which  will  be  below  that  of  the  United  States 
when  her  present  programme  is  complete. 

''ndeed,  Britain  has  endeavoured  to  show 
courtesies  to  the  great  Republic  of  the  West. 
Over  her  Parliament  House,  on  the  Fourth  of 
July,  which  has  not  been  regarded  hitherto 
as  a  specifically  English  festival,  she  has  flown 
the  Stars  and  Stripes.  In  her  War  Parade, 
she  gave  precedence  to  the  American  Army. 
No  visitor  to  our  Shores  ever  was  greeted  as 
the  President  of  the  United  States  was  greeted, 
and  for  the  reason  that  he  was  President. 
Americans  have  responded  by  a  more  than 
usually  cordial  reception  to  the  Prince  of 
Wales.  And  from  my  own  experience  I  can 
testify  to  the  unwearying  hospitality  of  Ameri- 
cans of  all  classes  and  all  racial  origins.  Kind- 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION     115 

liness  to  the  stranger  is  as  the  very  air  that 
men  breathe  in  this  young  and  vigorous 
democracy. 

The  recognition  of  the  Irish  Republic  seems 
hardly  in  tune  with  the  real  American  note 
of  men  like  Roosevelt.  The  right  of  asylum 
is  one  thing.  We  allowed  the  right  of  asylum 
to  Kossuth  and  to  Kropotkin.  But  it  is  a 
very  different  matter  when  official  bodies  add 
an  official  sanction  to  rebellion  in  another  State. 
It  is  widely  believed  in  Great  Britain  that  dis- 
order in  Ireland  would  disappear  to-morrow 
in  favor  of  the  Constitutional  movement  if  it 
were  not  for  the  assistance  of  American  sub- 
sidies. Many  British  believe  that  Ireland  is 
being  kept  in  a  turmoil  by  American  money 
(though  at  the  ultimate  expense  of  Britain) 
until  a  new  President  is  safely  elected  to  the 
White  House.  Then  the  funds,  they  think, 
will  cease. 

Let  Americans  put  themselves  for  a  moment 

in  the  position  of  a  man  like  myself  whose  duty 

it  is  to  defend   their  democratic   institutions 

before  the  Old  World.     I  believe  in  popular 

^government  and  want  to  see  others  adopt  it. 


ii6  THE  IRISH  CASE 

But  if  popular  government  is  to  be  extended, 
it  must  not  be  compromised.  Under  democ- 
racy, there  must  be  the  same  courtesy  among 
nations  as  there  once  was  among  kings.  In- 
deed, the  courtesy  ought  to  be  the  more  punc- 
tiHous  because  of  the  fact  that  an  offence  to 
hundreds  of  millions  of  people  is  harder  to 
wipe  out  than  an  offence  to  a  small  and 
privileged  class. 

The  action  of  Congress  towards  Ireland  is 
perhaps  worth  narrating.  On  March  4th,  19 19, 
the  House  of  Representatives  passed  the  fol- 
lowing Resolution: 

That  it  is  the  earnest  hope  of  the  Con- 
gress of  the  United  States  of  America 
that  the  Peace  Conference  now  sitting  in 
Paris  and  passing  upon  the  rights  of  the 
various  peoples  will  favorably  consider  the 
claim  of  Ireland  to  self-determination. 

Who  would  imagine  from  that  form  of 
words  that  there  were  two  Irelands,  equally 
self-determined  and  that  for  years,  Great  Bri- 
tain had  been  seeking  a  way  of  reconciling  the 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION    117 

said  self-determinations  with  a  view  to  uniting 
Ireland  for  absolutely  the  first  time  in  her  his- 
tory so  far  as  her  history  can  be  traced? 

On  June  6th,  19 19,  the  Senate  passed  the 
following  Resolution  with  but  one  dissentient: 

That  the  Senate  of  the  United  States 
earnestly  requests  the  American  Plenipo- 
tentiary Commissioners  at  Versailles  to  en- 
deavour to  secure  for  Eamonn  De  Valera, 
Arthur  Grifiiths,  and  Count  George  Noble 
Plunkett,  a  hearing  before  the  said  Peace 
Conference,  in  order  that  they  may  present 
the  case  of  Ireland,  and  resolved  further, 
that  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  ex- 
presses its  sympathy  with  the  aspirations 
of  the  Irish  People  for  a  Government  of 
its  own  choice. 

Who  would  suppose  from  this  resolution 
that  the  Sinn  Feiners  mentioned  were  opposed 
to  the  claims  of  the  entire  industrial  area  of 
Ireland;  and  if  they  were  to  be  heard,  why 
did  the  Senate  as  representing  a  nation  not 
devoid  of  Protestantism  forget  also  and  with 


ii8  THE  IRISH  CASE 

impartiality  to  ask  for  the  same  hearing  for 
Sir  Edward  Carson  as  was  demanded  for  the 
other  side?  And  why  was  it  not  mentioned 
that  the  place  where  the  Sinn  Feiners  had  a 
right  to  be  heard  was  the  House  of  Commons, 
that  their  seats  there  were  available  at  any  time, 
and  that  they  had  been  invited  in  addition  to 
the  Irish  Conference  and  had  refused  to  come  ? 
The  interference  of  the  Senate  is  not  so  much 
resented  for  its  own  sake  as  because  it  was  an 
inequitable  interference.  It  did  not  hold  the 
balance  even.  It  simply  dismissed  some  mil- 
lions of  Irish  as  of  no  importance  and  it  so 
dismissed  them  because  they  happened  to  be 
in  the  main  of  the  Protestant  Faith.  This  is 
the  view  of  the  average  level  headed  English- 
man. I  admit  that  the  Orangemen  are  being 
paid  back  in  their  own  coin.  They  have  ob- 
stinately resisted  a  settlement  when  a  settle- 
ment was  possible.  They  have  clung  to  an 
indefensible  Ascendancy  and  have  refused  to 
give  to  the  Catholics  of  Belfast  the  position  in 
the  City  to  which  by  numbers  the  Catholics  are 
entitled.  There  has  been  bigotry  on  the  one 
side  and  there  has  been  bigotry  on  the  other. 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION     119 

But  the  Senate  is  one  of  the  most  august  legis- 
lative bodies  in  the  world  and  is  it  the  desire 
of  any  far-sighted  American  citizen,  be  he 
Protestant  or  Catholic,  to  see  the  Protestant 
Ascendancy  in  Ireland  succeeded  by  a  clerical 
Ascendancy  of  any  kind  elsewhere  ?  The  aim 
should  be  rather  to  persuade  men  of  all  re- 
ligious convictions  to  live  together  as  citizens 
and  as  friends. 

Finally,  v/e  have  had  on  the  i8th  of  March, 
1920,  a  Reservation  to  the  Treaty,  proposed 
by  Senator  Gerry  of  Rhode  Island,  in  the  fol- 
lowing terms: 

The  United  States  adheres  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  self-determination  and  to  the  res- 
olution of  sympathy  with  the  aspirations 
of  the  Irish  People  for  a  government  of 
their  own  choice  and  declares  that  when 
self-government  is  attained  by  Ireland — 
a  consummation  it  is  hoped  is  at  hand — 
it  should  promptly  be  admitted  as  mem- 
ber of  the  League  of  Nations. 

This  resolution,  so  it  was  explained  in  the 


I20  THE  IRISH  CASE 

press,  was  really  brought  in  so  as  to  make  it 
easier  for  certain  votes  to  be  given  against  the 
Treaty  and  the  other  more  serious  Reserva- 
tions, which  means  that  it  was  part  of  a  subtle 
and  complicated  political  game.  Can  you  im- 
agine how  difficult  it  was  to  explain  this  to 
Great  Britain  on  the  other  side?  How  could 
the  explanation  be  given  without  doing  infinite 
damage  to  the  prestige  of  the  Senate  and  there- 
fore to  the  prestige  of  the  great  country  for 
which  the  Senate  is  privileged  to  speak?  And 
in  Ireland,  how  could  it  be  supposed  by  a 
romantic  and  enthusiastic  people  that  the 
Reservation  was  merely  a  piece  of  tactics?  It 
was  actually  being  suggested  that  a  Te  Deum 
should  be  sung  in  every  Church  in  Ireland 
over  this  ingenious  chicanery  of  the  division 
lobby. 

I  do  not  feel  that  I  am  called  upon  to  ex- 
press with  regard  to  this  matter  any  opinion 
of  my  own.  The  leading  article  of  the  New 
York  Sun,  appearing  on  March  19th,  1920,  was 
as  follows; 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION     121 

Self- Determination  in  Ireland,   Alaska  and 
Elsewhere ! 

One  of  the  last  incidents  of  the  long 
discussion  which  has  resulted  in  the  second 
refusal  by  the  United  States  Senate  to 
ratify  Mr.  Wilson's  treaty  and  covenant, 
with  or  without  reservations  is  so  dis- 
creditable to  the  Senators  responsible  for 
it  that  this  newspaper  cannot  refrain  from 
expressing  its  opinion  on  the  subject. 

The  Gerry  reservation  adhering  to  the 
principle  of  self-determination  and  to  the 
resolutions  of  sympathy  for  the  Irish  na- 
tionalists passed  by  the  Senate  last  June 
was  adopted  on  Thursday  by  the  narrow 
vote  of  38  to  2>^  and  thus  became  part 
of  the  treaty  and  covenant  which  the  Sen- 
ate rejected  on  Friday. 

The  attempted  injection  of  the  Irish 
question  into  the  treaty  is  pure  buncombe. 
This  is  equally  true,  whether  the  purpose 
was  merely  political  with  a  view  to  local 
exigencies  in  the  case  of  those  voting  for 


122  THE   IRISH  CASE 

the  reservation,  or  strategic  on  the  part 
of  the  so-called  Irreconcilables  in  order  to 
make  the  final  rejection  of  the  treaty  more 
certain. 

We  are  not  criticising  the  Gerry  reser- 
vation on  the  ground  that  it  declared  sym- 
pathy for  the  cause  of  independence  for 
Ireland.  If  such  sympathy  is  entertained 
by  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  an 
expression  of  it  is  perfectly  legitimate  and 
fully  in  accord  with  historic  precedent. 
That  was  the  case  with  the  resolution  of 
June  6,  19 19.  But  to  reiterate  that 
legitimate  declaration  in  the  form  of  a 
proposed  treaty  engagement  which  the 
British  Government  was  expected  either 
to  accept  or  to  reject  was  to  throw  to  the 
winds  all  pretence  of  non-interference  in 
the  domestic  affairs  of  foreign  nations  and 
to  essay  an  impertinence  of  meddling  the 
extent  of  which  can  be  understood  best 
by  a  supposition  which  the  news  of  yester- 
day suggests. 

Paris  reported  yesterday  that  it  had 
picked  up  a  wireless  despatch  from  Mos- 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION     123 

cow  saying  in  substance  that  the  popula- 
tion of  Alaska  is  now  seeking  to  break 
away  from  the  United  States  and  set  up 
a  Bolshevist  government.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  inquire  too  closely  into  the  inherent 
probability  of  this  announcement  from  the 
headquarters  of  Lenine  and  Trotzky.  Let 
us  assume  that  it  is  true,  merely  for  the 
sake  of  the  illustration. 

Suppose,  then,  that  the  people  of 
Alaska,  a  Territory  of  the  United  States 
formerly  belonging  to  Russia,  were  in  fact 
desirous  of  separating  themselves  from 
this  Government,  and,  on  the  principle  of 
self-determination,  aiming  to  organize  and 
establish  a  Soviet  Republic  independent 
of  Washington. 

Suppose  that  a  treaty  shaping  interna- 
tional relations  between  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  was  in  process  of  con- 
clusion and  that  the  British  Government, 
with  the  great  interest  in  the  future  of 
Alaska  inspired  by  the  contiguity  of  that 
American  Territory  with  the  Dominion 
of  Canada  along  a  boundary  of  fifteen 


124  THE  IRISH  CASE 

hundred  miles,  should  insert  in  the  treaty 
a  demand  for  the  independence  of  Alaska 
on  the  principle  of  self-determination. 

What  would  the  United  States  think  of 
that  method  of  interference  with  our 
domestic  concerns  in  the  name  of  self- 
determination?  Would  the  supposed 
Alaskan  clause  in  the  supposed  Anglo- 
American  treaty  meet  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic  a  calm  and  philosophic  considera- 
tion on  its  merits,  detached  from  all  na- 
tional emotions,  or  would  it  raise  through- 
out this  Republic  a  storm  of  patriotic  in- 
dignation imperilling  the  friendship  of 
the  two  countries? 

In  self-determination  by  treaty  enact- 
ment, as  in  other  matters,  it  is  a  mighty 
poor  rule  that  doesn't  work  both  ways. 

Senator  Lodge  was  quite  right  in  his 
unsuccessful  effort  to  eliminate  from  the 
reservations  any  general  indorsement  or 
approval  of  the  principle  of  self-de- 
termination. It  is  an  attractive  phrase, 
worked  by  Woodrow  Wilson  for  all  that 
it  was  worth  for  his  own  self-determined 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION     125 

purposes,  but  it  will  not  quite  wash  in  the 
great  American  tub.  Self-determination 
in  Alaska,  for  example,  as  in  the  case  sup- 
posed? Self-determination  in  Porto  Rico? 
Self-determination  in  Panama?  Self- 
determination  in  Hawaii  ?  Self-determina- 
tion, in  the  Wilsonian  sense,  in  any  terri- 
tory or  protected  adjunct  of  the  American 
Government?  It  is  as  impossible  as  self- 
determination  for  an  American  State ;  and 
the  right  even  of  sovereign  Statehood  to 
set  up  separately  was  settled,  so  far  as  this 
Republic  is  concerned,  fifty-five  years  ago 
next  month. 

It  is  not  only  Haiti  and  the  Philippines  that 
are  in  question.  By  far  the  most  serious  prob- 
lem before  the  American  People  to-day  is  after 
all  the  Negro  Problem.  Since  I  lived  in  this 
country  I  have  come  to  realise  the  immensity 
of  that  quiet  but  constant  racial  struggle.  I 
do  not  consider  that  I  am  under  any  necessity 
whatever  of  replying  to  an  American  Jury, 
greatly  as  I  recognise  the  importance  of  that 
tribunal,  on  the  disorders  which  have  occa- 


126  THE   IRISH   CASE 

sionally  broken  out  in  certain  areas  of  Ireland. 
As  long  as  it  is  true  that  within  a  few  years 
thousands  of  lynchings  have  taken  place  in 
this  country,  often  accompanied  by  incidents 
of  indescribable  horror,  I  must  tell  Americans 
plainly  and  I  hope  courteously  that  the  outcry 
over  hunger-strikes  in  Ireland  or  over  the 
Sheehy  Skeffington  miscarriage  of  Justice,  bad 
though  that  was,  merely  causes  the  cynic  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  to  smile.  There  was 
a  great  Teacher  Who  said : 

Judge  not  that  ye  be  not  judged.  For 
with  what  judgment  ye  judge,  ye  shall  be 
judged;  and  vnth  what  measure  ye  mete, 
it  shall  be  measured  to  you  again.  And 
why  beholdest  thou  the  mote  that  is  in 
thy  brother's  eye,  and  considerest  not  the 
beam  that  is  in  thine  own  eye?  Or  how 
wilt  thou  say  to  thy  brother.  Let  me  pull 
out  the  mote  out  of  thine  own  eye;  and, 
behold,  a  beam  is  in  thine  own  eye  ?  Thou 
hypocrite,  first  cast  out  the  beam  out  of 
thine  own  eye;  and  then  shalt  thou  see 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON   SECESSION     127 

clearly  to  cast  out  the  mote  that  is  in  thy 
brother's  eye. 

I  have  often  felt  the  force  of  those  verses 
when  I  have  been  tempted  to  magnify  such 
little  faults  as  there  may  still  be  in  the  United 
States. 

Between  the  ist  of  May,  19 16,  and  the  31st 
of  December,  19 19,  there  were  reported  in 
Ireland  1529  Sinn  Fein  outrages.  There  were 
20  murders.  There  vv^ere  589  robberies.  There 
were  70  incendiary  fires.  And  there  was  a 
balance  of  minor  offences. 

Were  these  kindly  and  Christian  acts?  Was 
it  this  sort  of  thing  that  Archbishop  Hayes 
intended  to  encourage  when  with  honest  and 
sincere  sympathy  for  the  oppressed  he  sub- 
scribed to  the  De  Valera  Loan?  What  about 
the  large  body  of  assassins  who  lined  the  road 
and  fired  volley  after  volley  of  shot  into  the 
car  where  Viscount  French  was  sitting  un- 
moved? What  exactly  would  be  said  in  this 
country  if  the  Governor  of  some  State,  dis- 
turbed by  a  strike  of  angry  workers  smarting 
under  a  sense  of  grievance,  were  to  be  thus 


128  THE  IRISH  CASE 

fusilladed  in  broad  daylight  by  men  applauded 
for  their  policy  by  the  British  Parliament  and 
claiming  the  authority  of  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury?  Once  you  begin  to  turn  this 
matter  around  the  other  way  you  see  at 
once  how  amazing  it  is.  I  am  quite  certain 
that  many  persons  have  subscribed  to  the  Sinn 
Fein  Funds  from  the  most  excellent  motives 
and  probably  under  the  most  explicit  guaran- 
tees. But  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for 
countries  minding  their  own  business.  After 
all,  how  can  anyone  in  this  country  really  in- 
form himself  of  what  is  going  on  behind  the 
scenes  on  the  other  side? 

The  St.  Patrick's  Day  Parade  in  which  Gov- 
ernor Smith  and  Mayor  Hylan  and  the  Arch- 
bishop and  Mr.  De  Valera  reviewed  the  proces- 
sion was  of  course  a  religious  celebration 
against  which  no  one  has  a  right  to  take  objec- 
tion. But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  in 
Ireland  the  occasion  was  always  an  act  of 
spiritual  devotion  as  it  is  in  the  United  States. 
I  could  not  help  contrasting  the  scene  outside 
St.  Patrick's  Cathedral,  with  the  grim  realities 
of  Sinn  Fein  in  Ireland,  the  masked  bands  of 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION     129 

assassins,  sparing  not  the  husband  before  the 
wife  or  the  mother  before  the  children.  Of 
course,  in  the  case  of  the  Mayor  of  Cork,  who 
was  done  to  death,  there  are  two  theories.  The 
one  is  that  he  met  his  terrible  fate  immediately 
after  being  turned  out  with  others  from  the 
inner  counsels  of  the  local  Sinn  Fein  Move- 
ment. The  other  is  the  theory  of  the  Coroner's 
Jury  that  the  murderer  was  Mr.  Lloyd  George. 
Well,  I  am  content  to  leave  it  at  that,  only 
adding  this  suggestion  that  it  is  not  the  height 
of  wisdom  for  those  of  us  who  live  at  a  dis- 
tance to  interfere  in  a  matter  so  obscure  and 
so  desperate. 

It  is  no  part  of  my  case  to  deny  that  the 
funds  raised  in  the  United  States  for  the  forces 
of  disorder  in  Ireland  and  the  rifles  of  foreign 
manufacture  which  are  found  in  Ireland  or 
going  there,  have  somewhat  aggravated  the 
anxieties  of  the  British  Government  at  a  time 
when  upon  no  Government  in  the  history  of 
the  world  has  there  bee*^  laid  under  Providence 
a  more  tremendous  responsibility.  Many  of  us 
had  hoped  that  the  United  States  with  her 
incomparable  colonial  record  in  the  Philippines 


130  THE  IRISH  CASE 

and  her  simply  perfect  educative  missions  in 
Turkey  would  have  seen  her  way  to  undertake 
the  problem  which  she  is  best  fitted  to  solve 
and  which  she  perhaps  can  only  solve — namely 
the  reorganisation  of  the  Ottoman  territories 
and  especially  of  Armenia.  That  was  not  ap- 
parently to  be  and  what  happened?  Britain 
was  being  harassed  in  Ireland.  She  was  being 
harassed  in  India  by  the  Friends  of  Indian 
Freedom  in  the  United  States  which  is  in  close 
association  with  the  Friends  of  Irish  Freedom. 
From  Armenia,  she  had  in  consequence  to  with- 
draw her  troops.  A  million  Armenians  had 
been  slain  already.  Thousands  more  were 
butchered,  including  scores  of  girls,  rescued 
from  Turkish  slavery  and  domiciled  in  the 
American  Mission  at  Marash,  which  was  burnt 
to  the  ground.  To  Sinn  Fein,  meaning  Our- 
selves alone,  what  does  an  Armenian  girl  in  a 
Protestant  orphanage  matter  ?  She  matters  no 
more  than  a  Catholic  nun  in  a  Belgian  Convent. 
She  matters  no  more  than  the  poor  Belgian 
woman  in  my  house  trembling  under  a  rain 
of  German  bombs.  A  murdered  Armenian 
maiden  does  not  vote. 


THE  ARGUMENT  ON  SECESSION     131 

I  repeat — the  Irish  extremists  are  tre- 
mendous agitators.  I  doubt  whether  in  the 
history  of  the  world  there  have  been  such  con- 
summate poHticians.  But  these  are  days  when 
we  stand,  not  at  the  ballot  box  merely,  not  at 
the  soapbox  either.  We  stand,  every  one  of  us, 
at  the  judgment  throne  of  the  Almighty.  And 
in  the  last  day,  it  will  be  no  answer  to  that 
tribunal  and  its  questions,  for  us  to  say,  **But 
we  had  to  gtt  the  Irish  Vote!''  for  ourselves 
alone. 

Seldom  if  ever  in  the  history  of  nations  has 
there  been  a  spectacle  quite  like  the  campaign 
now  being  waged  in  the  United  States  for 
trouble  with  the  United  Kingdom.  A  great 
outburst  of  genuine  friendship  from  Britain 
to  the  United  States  was  flung  back  in  her 
face  as  a  thing  of  naught.  There  is  however 
a  silent  splendid  soul  in  the  heart  of  the  United 
States  which  tolerates  much  that  it  deplores. 
It  is  a  soul  which  says  that  here  after  all  is 
a  nation  in  the  making.  Here  is  a  nation  the 
full  fruition  of  whose  splendid  destiny  is  fore- 
shadowed by  the  very  embarrassments  of  a 
mingled  population.     In  the  making  of  the 


132  THE  IRISH  CASE 

nation  that  is  to  be,  Catholic  and  Protestant 
must  play  their  part,  each  stimulating  the  other. 
And  Irishmen  and  Scotsmen  must  here  find  at 
last  their  common  denominator.  The  gravest 
aspect  of  the  Irish  agitation  is  not  after  all 
the  danger  that  it  may  prevent,  as  it  is  intended 
to  prevent,  a  settlement  in  Ireland.  What  then  ? 
If  a  settlement  in  Ireland  is  prevented,  it  fol- 
lows that  sectarian  differences  will  be  fomented 
in  the  United  States.  They  who  speak  the 
English  language  and  who  should  be  teaching 
all  that  the  English  language  means  to  those 
whose  parents  have  had  it  not,  will  be  working 
not  with  each  other  but  in  rival  camps.  There 
is  not  a  line  of  this  little  plea  for  reason  and 
justice  towards  Ireland  and  England  which  is 
not  also  a  plea  as  from  a  devoted  admirer  and 
friend  of  the  United  States,  for  the  noble  op- 
portunity of  world  wide  influence  that  lies  be- 
fore the  Republic  of  the  West. 


APPENDIX  A 

THE  HOME  RULE  BILL— SUMMARY  OF 
ITS  PROVISIONS 

(These  Appendices  are  quoted  by  permission  from 
the  May  Number  of  Current  Opinion) 

The  Irish  Home  Rule  bill,  which  passed  its  sec- 
ond reading  in  the  House  of  Commons  by  a  vote  of 
348  to  94  on  March  31,  contains  the  following 
provisions : 

I.  Two  Parliaments — On  and  after  the  ap- 
pointed day  there  should  be  established  a  Parlia- 
ment of  Soutnern  Ireland  and  a  Parliament  of 
Northern  Ireland,  each  consisting  of  the  King  and 
a  House  of  Commons.     No  Second  Chambers. 

Northern  Ireland  consists  of  the  Parliamentary 
counties  of  Antrim,  Armagh,  Down,  Fermanagh, 
Londonderry  and  Tyrone,  and  the  Parliamentary 
boroughs  of  Belfast  and  Londonderry.  The  rest  is 
Southern  Ireland. 

II.  The  Council — i.  The  Council  of  Ireland,  to 
be  constituted  as  soon  as  may  be  after  the  appointed 
day,  to  bring  about  harmonious  action  between  the 
Parliaments,  to  promote  mutual  intercourse  and  uni- 
formity in  matters  affecting  all  Ireland,  and  to  ad- 
minister services  mutually  agreed  upon  or  assigned 
to  it  by  this  act. 

133 


134  THE  HOME  RULE  BILL 

2.  The  Council,  in  the  first  instance,  to  be  the 
King,  as  President,  and  twenty  members  of  each 
House  of  Commons,  chosen  as  each  house  may  de- 
termine; this  to  be  the  first  business  of  each  House 
of  Commons. 

3.  The  Constitution  of  the  Council  may  be  varied 
by  identical  acts  of  the  two  Parliaments,  which  may 
provide  for  all  or  any  of  its  members  to  be  elected 
by  Parliamentary  electorate. 

III.  Parliament  for  All  Ireland — i.  The  two 
Parliaments  by  identical  acts  may  establish  in  lieu 
of  the  Council  of  Ireland  a  Parliament  for  the 
whole  of  Ireland,  consisting  of  the  King  and  one  or 
two  houses.  The  whole  Constitution  of  this  Parlia- 
ment as  to  members,  mode  of  election  or  appoint- 
ment, and,  if  there  are  two  Houses,  their  relations  to 
one  another,  are  to  be  determined  by  the  Provincial 
Parliaments.  The  date  at  which  the  Parliament  of 
Ireland  is  to  be  established  is  afterv^^ard  referred  to 
as  the  date  of  Irish  union. 

2.  On  the  date  of  Irish  union  the  Parliament  of 
Ireland  receives  the  powers  of  the  Council,  all  mat- 
ters which  at  that  date  cease  to  be  reserved  under 
this  act  and  any  powers  conferred  by  the  Provincial 
Parliaments. 

3.  All  the  powers  of  the  Provincial  Parliaments 
pass  to  the  Parliament  of  Ireland,  except  so  far  as 
the  constituent  acts  otherwise  provide,  and,  if  no 
powers  are  reserved,  the  constituent  acts  must  settle 
financial  relations  between  the  Exchequers. 

4.  If  any  powers  are  reserved  at  first  they  may  be 
transferred  by  identical  acts  later,  when  the  Pro- 
vincial Parliaments  would  cease  to  exist. 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL  135 

Legislative  Authority 

IV.  Reserved  Powers— i.  The  Provincial  Parlia- 
ments have  full  powers  within  their  respective  areas, 
except  in  respect  of: 

(i)   Crown  succession,  &c. 

(2)  Peace  or  war  or  matters  arising  from  a 
state  of  war,  or  the  regulation  of  the  conduct 
of  subjects  toward  hostilities  between  foreign 
States. 

(3)  Navy,  army,  pensions,  &c. 

(4)  Treaties  of  foreign  relations  or  rela- 
tions with  the  Dominions,  extradition,  or  the 
return  of  fugitive  offenders. 

(5)  Dignities  or  titles  of  honour. 

(6)  Treason,  naturalization,  aliens,  &c. 

(7)  Trade  external  to  the  area  (except  as 
affected  by  the  powers  of  taxation  given  or 
agencies  for  the  improvement  or  protection  of 
trade),  export  bounties,  quarantine  or  naviga- 
tion, except  inland  waters. 

(8) J  (9)»  (10)  ai^d  (11)  Cables,  wireless, 
aerial  navigation,  lighthouses,  &c. 

(12)  and  (13)  Coinage  measures,  trade 
marks,  copyrights,  patents,  &c.,  and 

(14)   Any  matter  reserved  by  this  act. 

V.  Religious  Freedom — i.  This  clause  forbids 
either  Parliament  to  make  a  law  "so  as  either  di- 
rectly or  indirectly  to  establish  or  endow  any  re- 
ligion or  prohibit  or  restrict  the  free  exercise 
thereof  or  give  a  preference,  privilege,  or  advantage 
or  impose  any  disability  or  disadvantage  on  account 
of  religious  belief." 


136  THE   HOME   RULE   BILL 

VL  Conflict  of  Laws — i.  The  Irish  Parlia- 
ments have  no  power  to  repeal  or  alter  any  act 
passed  by  the  Parliament  of  the  United  Kingdom 
after  the  appointed  day,  though  it  deal  with  a  mat- 
ter with  respect  to  which  they  have  power  to  make 
laws. 

2.  Where  an  act  of  either  Irish  Parliament  con- 
flicts with  an  Imperial  act,  it  is  void  so  far  as  it 
conflicts. 

VII.  Provision  for  Private  Bills — This  clause 
assigns  to  the  Council  of  Ireland  power  of  private 
bills  legislation  affecting  both  areas. 

VIII.  Executive  Authority —  The  executive 
power  and  prerogative  of  the  Crown  are  vested  in 
the  Lord  Lieutenant,  and  are  to  be  exercised  through 
such  departments  as  may  be  established  by  each 
Provincial  Parliament.  "The  Lord  Lieutenant  may 
appoint  officers  to  administer  those  departments,  and 
those  officers  shall  hold  office  during  the  pleasure  of 
the  Lord  Lieutenant."  The  heads  of  departments 
and  such  others  as  the  Lord  Lieutenant  may  appoint 
are  the  Provincial  Ministers. 

A  Provincial  Minister  must  be  a  member  of  the 
Privy  Council  of  Ireland,  must  not  hold  office  more 
than  six  months  unless  he  is  or  becomes  a  member 
of  the  Provincial  House  of  Commons,  and  if  he  is 
not  the  head  of  a  department,  holds  office  during 
the  pleasure  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant,  in  the  same 
manner  as  the  head  of  a  department. 

The  Provincial  Ministers  form  an  Executive  Com- 
mittee of  the  Privy  Council  of  Ireland,  called  the 
Executive  Committee  of  Northern  or  Southern  Ire- 
land, to  advise  the  Lord  Lieutenant  in  the  exercise 
of  his  executive  powers  in  the  province. 


THE   HOME  RULE   BILL  137 

In  the  exercise  of  executive  power  there  should 
be  no  religious  privilege  or  disability,  except  where 
the  nature  of  the  case  involves  it. 

The  seat  of  government  in  each  province  is  to  be 
determined  by  the  province, 

"Irish  services"  in  each  province  include  all  civil 
government,  except  as  restricted  or  reserved  by  this 
act. 

IX.  Police,  Appointment  of  Justices — i.  The 
Royal  Irish  Constabulary  and  the  Metropolitan 
Police,  and  the  administration  of  acts  relating 
thereto,  including  the  appointment  and  the  removal 
of  magistrates,  are  reserved  until  transferred  by 
Order  in  Council  to  the  Provincial  Parliaments,  but 
not  longer  than  three  years  after  the  appointed  day. 
If  transferred  after  the  date  of  Irish  union,  how- 
ever, they  go  to  the  Government  of  All  Ireland, 
unless  otherwise  provided  by  the  constituent  acts. 

2.  While  reserved,  these  forces  are  controlled  by 
a  representative  appointed  by  each  Provincial  Gov- 
ernment and  a  third  appointed  by  the  Crown,  "and 
that  body  shall  have  such  powers  in  relation  to  the 
maintenance  of  law  and  order  in  Ireland  as  his 
IMajesty  in  Council  may  by  order  determine." 

3.  The  postal  service,  post  office,  and  trustee  sav- 
ings banks,  postal  or  revenue  stamps  and  the  Pub- 
lic Record  Office  of  Ireland  are  reserved  until  the 
date  of  Irish  union,  when,  so  far  as  they  are  within 
the  powers  of  the  Irish  Parliament,  they  are  to  be 
transferred  to  the  Government  of  Ireland.  They 
are,  however,  to  be  transferred  before  the  date  of 
Irish  union  to  the  Council  of  Ireland  if  the  two  Pro- 
vincial Parliaments  so  provide  by  identical  acts. 

4.  The  general  subject  matter  of  the  Land  Pur- 


138  THE   HOME  RULE   BILL 

chase  act  is  reserved  until  transferred  by  an  im- 
perial act  of  Parliament,  but  the  reservation  does 
not  include  the  powers  of  the  Congested  Districts 
Board,  with  a  financial  exception,  nor  does  it  in- 
clude the  powers  of  the  Irish  Land  Commission  as 
to  the  collection  and  recovery  of  prrchase  annuities. 
X.  Powers  of  the  Irish  Council — i.  The  Pro- 
vincial Parliaments,  by  identical  acts,  may  delegate 
any  of  the  provincial  powers  to  the  Council. 

2.  The  powers  of  the  Imperial  Parliament  over 
railways,  including  legislation,  are  transferred  to 
the  Irish  Council. 

3.  The  Council  has  various  deliberative  and  ad- 
visory functions  as  to  the  welfare  of  both  provinces, 
including  the  recommendation  of  identical  acts  to 
delegate  desirable  powers  from  the  Provincial  Par- 
liaments to  the  Council. 

4.  Orders  of  the  Council  of  a  legislative  character 
are  to  be  presented  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant  for  the 
Royal  assent  as  if  they  were  bills. 

The  Two  Parliaments 

XI  and  XII.  A  Session  Every  Year — There 
must  be  a  session  every  year  with  less  than  twelve 
months  between  summons,  prorogation  and  dissolu- 
tion by  the  Lord  Lieutenant.  Royal  assent  to  bills 
is  to  be  given  by  the  Lord  Lieutenant  subject  to 
instructions  from  the  Crown  and  reservations,  if 
directed  by  the  Crown,  for  the  direct  Royal  assent. 

XIII.  Number  of  M.  P.'s  :  P.  R.  Elections — The 
House  of  Commons  of  Southern  Ireland  to  have  128 
members  and  that  of  Northern  Ireland  to  have  52. 

General  elections  by  proportional  representation, 
single  transferable  vote. 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL  139 

The  term  of  each  Parliament  is  to  be  five  years, 
unless  sooner  dissolved.  After  three  years  from  the 
first  meeting  each  Parliament  may  alter  the  whole 
election  law  except  as  to  the  number  of  members 
of  Parliament. 

XIV.  Election  Laws — All  existing  election  laws 
apply  except  as  altered  by  this  act  or  by  the  Pro- 
vincial Parliaments  under  this  act. 

XV.  Money  Bills — The  Provincial  Parliaments 
may  not  pass  money  bills,  &c.,  except  in  pursuance 
of  a  recommendation  from  the  Lord  Lieutenant  in 
the  session  in  which  they  are  proposed. 

XVI.  Privileges — The  privileges  of  each  Par- 
liament and  its  members  are  never  to  exceed  those 
of  the  Parliament  of  the  United  Kingdom,  and  are 
to  be  the  same  as  those  until  defined  by  acts  of  the 
Provincial  Parliaments.  Peers  may  be  members  of 
the  House  of  Commons. 

XVn.  Irish  M.  P.'s  at  Westminster — Until  the 
Parliament  of  the  United  Kingdom  otherwise  de- 
termines there  are  to  be  forty-two  Irish  members  in 
the  Imperial  Parliament.  The  present  members  of 
the  House  of  Commons  are  to  vacate  their  seats  on 
the  appointed  day  and  writs  are  to  be  issued  for 
the  election  of  new  ones. 

Financial  Provisions 

XVIII.  Finance — There  is  to  be  a  Consolidated 
Fund  for  each  of  the  two  areas.  The  Parliaments 
have  power  to  make  laws  imposing,  charging,  levy- 
ing and  collecting  taxes  other  than  customs  duties, 
excise  duties  on  articles  manufactured  and  produced, 
and  excess  profits  duty  and  the  United  Kingdom  in- 
come tax.  But, 


140  THE   HOME   RULE   BILL 

The  imposing,  charging,  levying  and  collec- 
tion of  customs  duties  and  of  excise  duties  on 
articles  manufactured  and  produced,  and  the 
granting  of  customs  and  excise  drawbacks  and 
allowances,  and,  except  to  the  extent  herein- 
after mentioned,  the  imposing,  charging,  levy- 
ing and  collection  of  income  tax  (including 
super-tax)  and  excess  profits  duty,  shall  be  re- 
served matters  and  the  proceeds  of  those  duties 
and  taxes  shall  be  paid  into  the  Consolidated 
Fund  of  the  United  Kingdom. 

The  Joint  Exchequer  Board  is  to  determine  what 
part  of  the  proceeds  of  these  duties  are  properly 
attributable  to  Ireland.  Each  year  Ireland  is  to 
make  a  contribution  toward  Imperial  liabilities. 
For  the  first  two  years  this  is  to  be  £18,000,000.  Of 
this  contribution  for  the  first  two  years  Southern 
Ireland  will  provide  56  per  cent,  and  Northern 
Ireland  will  provide  44  per  cent.,  after  which  the 
proportions  will  be  determined  by  the  Joint  Ex- 
chequer Board.  Every  year  a  sum  equal  to  the 
Irish  share  of  reserved  taxes  is  to  be  paid  out  of 
the  United  Kingdom  Consolidated  Fund  to  the  Irish 
Exchequers,  after  deducting  the  amount  of  the  IrisR 
contribution  toward  Imperial  liabilities,  and  while 
any  services  remain  reserved  the  net  cost  of  these 
will  be  deducted. 

XIX.  Income  Tax — The  Irish  Parliaments  are 
to  have  power  to  impose  an  additional  income  tax 
or  super  tax,  to  be  called  a  surtax.  The  land  pur- 
chase annuities  are  to  be  collected  by  the  Irish  Gov- 
ernments and  paid  into  the  appropriate  account. 
Provisions  are  made  against  double  death  duties  and 
so  forth. 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL  141 

A  clause  enacts  that  after  the  date  of  Irish  Union 
the  question  of  allowing  Ireland  control  over  cus- 
toms and  excise  may  be  considered. 

XX.  Supreme  Court — The  Supreme  Court  of 
Ireland  will  cease  to  exist  and  there  will  be  two 
Supreme  Courts,  one  for  Southern  Ireland  and  one 
for  Northern  Ireland.  All  matters  relating  to  these 
Supreme  Courts  are  "reserved  matters"  until  the 
date  of  Irish  Union,  but  here  again  identical  acts 
passed  by  bo^h  Parliaments  might  secure  their  amal- 
gamation. Existing  Judges  and  civil  servants  are 
secured  in  their  office. 

All  existing  laws,  institutions  and  authorities  are 
to  be  continued  with  the  necessary  modifications 
until  altered  so  far  as  they  can  be  altered  within 
the  powers  of  the  Parliaments. 

The  existing  exem.ptions  and  immunities  of  Dub- 
lin University,  Trinity  College  and  Queen's  Uni- 
versity at  Belfast  are  to  continue;  £18,000  is  to  be 
appropriated  by  the  Northern  Parliament  for 
Queens  University  and  £5,000  by  the  Southern  Par- 
liament for  Trinity.  Both  Parliaments  are  forbid- 
den to  enact  laws  prejudicial  to  Free  Masons.  The 
final  provisions  of  the  bill  are  as  follows : 

The  Appointed  Day — i.  This  act  shall,  except  as 
expressly  provided,  come  into  operation  on  the  ap- 
pointed day,  and  the  appointed  day  for  the  purposes 
of  this  act  shall  be  the  first  Tuesday  in  the  eighth 
month  after  the  month  in  which  this  act  is  passed, 
or  such  other  day  not  more  than  seven  months 
earlier  or  later,  as  may  be  fixed  by  Order  of  his 


142  THE  HOME  RULE  BILL 

Majesty  in  Council  either  generally  or  with  refer- 
ence to  any  particular  provision  of  this  act,  and 
different  days  may  be  appointed  for  different  pur- 
poses and  different  provisions  of  this  act,  but  the 
Parliaments  of  Southern  and  Northern  Ireland  shall 
be  summoned  to  meet  not  later  than  four  months 
after  the  said  Tuesday,  and  the  appointed  day  for 
holding  elections  for  the  House  of  Commons  of 
Southern  and  Northern  Ireland  shall  be  fixed  ac- 
cordingly : 

Provided  that  the  appointed  day  as  respects  the 
transfer  of  any  service  may,  at  the  joint  request 
of  the  Governments  of  Southern  Ireland  and  North- 
ern Ireland  be  fixed  at  a  date  later  than  seven 
months  after  the  said  Tuesday. 

2.  Nothing  in  this  act  shall  afTect  the  administra- 
tion of  any  service  before  the  day  appointed  for  the 
transfer  of  that  service  from  the  Government  of 
the  United  Kingdom. 

Supremacy  of  Westminster — Notwithstanding 
the  establishment  of  the  Parliaments  of  Southern 
and  Northern  Ireland,  or  the  Parliament  of  Ire- 
land, or  anything  contained  in  this  act,  the  supreme 
authority  of  the  Parliament  of  the  United  Kingdom 
shall  remain  unaffected  and  undiminished  over  all 
persons,  matters  and  things  in  Ireland  and  every 
part  thereof. 

Repeal  of  1914  Act — i.  This  act  may  be  cited 
as  the  Government  of  Ireland  act,  1920. 

2.  The  Government  of  Ireland  act,  1914,  is  hereby 
repealed. 


APPENDIX  B 

MR.  LLO\D  GEORGE'S  STATEMENT, 
31  MARCH,  1920 

Premier  Lloyd  George  in  his  address  in  support 
of  the  Irish  Home  Rule  bill  said  that  if  the  people 
of  Ireland  were  asked  what  plan  they  would  accept, 
by  an  emphatic  majority  they  would  reply,  "We 
want  independence,  and  also  a  republic."  The 
elected  representatives  of  Ireland  now,  by  a  definite 
majority,  have  declared  for  independence  and  seces- 
sion. But  is  there  a  single  party  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  a  single  group  or  fraction  of  a  party, 
that  would  accept  that  solution?  Having  dramatic- 
ally asked  this  question  and  paused  through  a  brief 
silence  that  was  an  answer,  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
continued : 

Therefore,  it  is  no  use  talking  about  self-deter- 
mination. Self-determination  does  not  mean  that 
every  part  of  a  country  which  has  been  acting  with 
the  other  parts  for  hundreds  of  years  shall  have  the 
right  to  say,  '"We  want  to  set  up  a  separate  repub- 
lic." That  is  exactly  the  very  thing  that  was  fought 
for  in  the  Civil  War  in  America. 
143 


144  THE   HOME   RULE   BILL 

If  any  section  in  Wales  were  to  get  up  and  say, 
"We  want  to  set  up  a  Welsh  Republic."  I  should 
certainly  resist  it  to  the  utmost  of  my  power;  and 
Britain,  in  its  own  interests,  including  the  interests 
of  Wales,  would  be  right  to  resist  it;  yet  it  has  as 
definite  and  as  clear  a  nationality  as  any  other 
nationality  in  this  kingdom.  The  same  thing  applies 
to  Scotland.  If  Brittany  demanded  self-determina- 
tion, that  does  not  mean  that  France,  which  has 
been  in  favour  of  the  principle  of  self-determination, 
ought  to  grant  a  separate  republic  to  Brittany. 

There  must  be  a  limitation  to  the  application  of 
any  principle.  Otherwise  you  might  carry  it  to 
every  fragment  and  every  area  and  every  locality  in 
every  country  throughout  the  world.  When  you 
lay  down  a  principle  of  that  kind  you  must  lay  it 
down  within  the  limitations  which  common  sense 
and  tradition  will  permit.  That  is  my  answer  about 
Ireland. 

I  now  ask  the  leader  of  the  Labour  Party,  is  he 
speaking  on  behalf  of  his  party  in  favour  of  apply- 
ing the  principle  of  self-determination  to  Ireland? 

Mr.  Clynes:  If  an  answer  is  required,  the  an- 
swer is,  "Not  self-determination  as  you  have  de- 
fined it." 

Mr.  Lloyd  George:  "That  means  that  the  Labour 
Party  is  not  prepared  to  give  self-determination  to 
Ireland.  That  is,  if  Ireland  demands  a  separate 
Irish  Republic,  the  Labour  Party  is  opposed  to  it. 
It  only  misleads  Irish  electors,  in  Ireland  and  this 
country,  into  the  belief  that  the  Labour  Party  means 
to  concede  self-determination. 

Now  I  come  to  the  suggestion  made  by  Mr.  As- 
quith.     He  has  a   plan.     Can   he  name  any  Irish 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL  145 

party   or   any   section   of  a   party   in   Ireland   that 
would  say,  ''We  will  accept  it?" 

What  is  it?  The  Act  of  1914,  with  Dominion 
Home  Rule  added,  so  far  as  I  can  understand,  sub- 
ject to  serious  limitations.  It  gives  the  power  to 
erect  a  tariff  wall  against  Great  Britain,  to  exclude 
British  goods  from  Ireland,  to  give  preference  to 
America,  or  even  to  Germany.  That  is  the  proposal, 
but  with  the  exclusion  of  Ulster  counties.  He  says: 
"I  would  give  an  Irish  Parliament  to  the  whole  of 
Ireland  with  county  option."  He  can  say  what  he 
will  about  it,  that  is  partition.  It  may  be  the  parti- 
tion of  four  counties  instead  of  six.  Nevertheless, 
it  is  partition. 


Disagreement  on  Everything 

The  speaker  sated  that  the  Asquith  proposal 
would  be  rejected  with  scorn  by  Sinn  Feiners, 
Nationalists  and  Ulsterites,  and  continued : 

What  is  the  use  of  saying,  under  those  circum- 
stances, that  no  plan  is  acceptable  unless  Irish  opin- 
ion will  accept  it?  I  have  pointed  out  that  there  is 
no  plan  acceptable  to  any  British  party  which  is 
acceptable  to  any  party  in  Ireland  at  the  moment. 

That  is  one  of  the  fundamental  facts.  You  have 
not  a  foundation  to  build  on  until  you  accept  it. 
It  is  no  use  talking  about  this  bill  not  being  ac- 
ceptable to  Irish  opinion.  Mr.  Asquith's  plan  is 
not  acceptable.  Mr.  Clynes  would  have  a  conven- 
tion in  Ireland  and  a  constituent  assembly,  I  take 
it,  with  legislative  powers.     There  has  been  a  con- 


146  THE   HOME   RULE   BILL 

vention  in  Ireland  and  not  even  Nationalist  opinion 
was  agreed  there.  There  is  a  document  signed  by 
twenty-two  Nationalists  and  another  signed  by 
twenty-six  Nationalists,  disagreeing. 

In  speaking  of  the  powers  given  to  the  Parlia- 
ment by  the  act,  Mr.  Lloyd  George  said: 

These  are  the  powers  given  by  the  act,  and  it  is 
a  great  mistake,  it  is  unfair,  it  is  misleading,  it  can 
do  no  good  to  represent  to  the  people  of  this  coun- 
try, and  especially  to  the  people  of  Ireland  that 
these  are  not  powers  of  a  gigantic  kind  which  are 
conferred  on  these  Parliaments  by  these  proposals. 

The  position  is  of  a  character  which  makes  it 
absolutely  essential  that  before  anything  can  be 
done  for  the  whole  of  Ireland  there  should  be 
agreement  between  North  and  South.  We  have  de- 
liberately framed  it  in  such  a  way  that  no  powers 
beyond  those  which  we  have  specified  should  be 
given  over  the  whole  of  Ireland,  except  with  the 
consent,  not  merely  of  the  North,  but  of  the  South 
as  well.  The  South  can  veto  the  North  and  the 
North  can  veto  the  South,  unless  there  is  unity 
between  them. 

Much  will  depend,  when  you  try  to  achieve  unity, 
on  the  attitude  of  the  Sinn  Fein  population  of  the 
South.  They  can  bring  unity  nearer  by  years  if 
they  like  to  make  an  effort  to  work  this;  but  if  they 
work  for  the  purpose  of  inflicting  harm  on  Ulster 
or  on  the  population  of  this  country  they  will  post- 
pone union  indefinitely. 

It  is  for  that  reason  I  think  it  is  a  misfortune 
that  the  population  of  Ireland  has  been  misled  as 


THE  HOME  RULE  BILL  147 

to  what  the  bill  really  contains,  because  in  that 
temper  they  cannot  counter  it.  I  know  there  are 
many  men  in  Ireland  who  sincerely  desire  to  see 
this  bill  through;  men  who  are  just  as  good  Nation- 
alists as  those  sitting  on  that  bench. 

This  scheme  holds  the  field  because  it  recog- 
nizes the  facts.  It  recognizes  that  you  cannot  sat- 
isfy Irish  opinion  in  its  present  state  of  exaltation 
without  destroying  the  essential  unity  of  the  United 
Kingdom.     I  regret  it. 

The  second  point  is  that  the  demand  in  Ireland 
for  the  moment  is  a  demand  for  independence,  for 
secession  and  not  self-government. 

Reminder  to  America 

I  want  to  say  this  to  our  American  friends.  Mr. 
De  Valera  is  putting  forward  the  same  claim,  in 
exactly  the  same  language,  as  Mr.  Jefferson  Davis ; 
and  the  ancestors  of  some  of  the  men  who  voted 
for  that  motion  in  the  Senate  the  other  day  fought 
to  the  death  against  conceding  to  the  Southern 
States  of  the  United  States  of  America  that  very 
demand  they  were  supporting  in  Ireland. 

The  acceptance  of  that  demand  was  never  con- 
ceded. It  is  a  demand  which,  if  it  is  persisted  in, 
will  lead  to  exactly  the  same  measures  of  repression 
as  in  the  Southern  States  of  America.  We  claim 
nothing  more  than  the  United  States  claimed  over 
these;  we  will  stand  no  less. 

The  second  point  I  want  to  put  is  this :  There  are 
certain  powers  which  might  be  conferred  on  Ire- 
land when  she  settles  down  and  accepts  union  and 
works  union,  vvhich,  if  given  to  her  in  her  present 


148  THE  HOME  RULE  BILL 

mood,  would  only  be  used  for  the  hurt  of  the 
United  Kingdom  and  her  own.  It  would  be' placing 
dangerous  weapons  in  the  hands  of  an  infuriated 
people. 

Take  customs.  If  you  handed  them  over  they 
would  be  used  inevitably  for  the  purpose  of  making 
war  on  Great  Britain.  Those  are  powers  we  can- 
not see  our  way  to  confer  until  Ireland  settles  dov/n, 
until  Ireland  establishes  union,  until  Ireland  accepts 
in  good  faith  partnership  with  the  United  Kingdom 
just  like  any  other  nationality  in  this  land. 

The  other  fact  is  that  referred  to  by  Sir  Edward 
Carson,  with  regard  to  Ulster.  Ulster  has  been 
treated  as  if  it  were  a  minority  to  be  protected. 
Ulster  is  not  a  minority  to  be  safeguarded.  Ulster  is 
an  entity  to  be  dealt  with.  It  is  a  different  problem. 
It  is  a  separate  and  different  part  of  Ireland. 

It  is  exactly  the  problem  in  Silesia  which  we  were 
dealing  with  in  the  Ftix^e  Conference.  We  might 
have  treated  Silesia  as  a  whole,  which  it  always 
had  been;  but  we  felt  that  that  would  be  unfair.  If 
the  majority  had  been  in  favour- of  the  Germans  you 
would  put  solid  blocks  of  Poles  inside  Germany;  if 
the  majority  had  been  in  favour  of  the  Poles  you 
would  have  put  solid  blocks  of  Germans  inside 
Poland. 

Wrong  Idea  of  Government 

There  is  a  good  deal  in  Irish  government  that  one 
regrets,  but  the  real  fact  is  this — that  for  not  loo 
years  but  for  700  years  the  majority  of  the  people 
have  been  dissociated  from  responsibility  in  their 
own  Government — and  the  hand  that  extended  good 


THE  HOME  RULE  BILL  149 

government  to  them  was  the  same  hand  that  ex- 
tended bad  government. 

It  is  not  that  Irishmen  sympathize  with  murder. 
That  is  not  the  point.  They  say  that  is  the  busi- 
ness of  the  Government,  and  the  Government  is 
not  theirs.     The  Government  belongs  to  somebody 

else. 

My  right  honourable  friend  said  the  teachers  were 
very  badly  paid  in  Ireland  and  he  talked  as  if 
that  was  purely  a  matter  with  Great  Britain.  It  is 
not.  We  rate  ourselves  heavily.  We  make  our  own 
efforts  to  pay  contributions  to  our  teachers.  In  Ire- 
land they  say  that  is  the  business  of  the  Government. 
The  whole  system  of  government  in  Ireland  is 
vitiated  by  the  fact  that  you  sever  the  people  from 
law  and  government.  That  has  got  to  be  put  right. 
There  is  no  union.  There  is  union  between  Scot- 
land, England  and  Wales.  There  is  union  that 
bear's  the  test  of  death.  There  is  no  union  with 
Ireland.  Her  grappling  hook  was  not  union.  I  am 
sanguine  enough  to  believe  that  we  shall  get  it 
through  this  bill. 

I  do  not  say  you  will  get  it  in  a  year,  or  two,  or 
three  years.  You  cannot  remove  misconceptions, 
misunderstandings,  bitterness  of  centuries  in  a  year 
or  two.  Ireland  is  a  country  of  long  memories.  In 
fact  the  one  trouble  of  Ireland  is  that  it  has  struck 
its  roots  rather  too  deep  into  the  past  and  has  got 
into  poor  soil. 

Ireland  needs  root-pruning;  but  I  believe  that 
with  patience  and  with  that  sort  of  good  humour 
which  Britons  under  certain  conditions  display,  and 
not  taking  too  much  notice  of  mere  histrionic  dis- 
plays  of   disaffection,   and   dealing  firmly   with   all 


ISO  THE  HOME  RULE  BILL 

real  cases  of  treason  and  lawlessness,  you  will 
gradually  arrive  at  the  union  of  North  and  South— 
a  union  of  Protestant  and  Catholic,  a  real  union  of 
good  partners  in  a  great  concern,  of  which  all  alike 
equally  will  be  proud. 


APPENDIX  C 

EX-PREMIER  ASQUITH'S  CRITICISMS— 
HIS  SUBSTITUTE  PROPOSAL 

Herbert  -H.  Asquith,  the  former  Premier  and 
present  leader  of  the  Opposition,  speaking  against 
the  Home  Rule  bill  in  the  House  of  Commons  on 
March  31,  contended  that  no  new  scheme  of  gov- 
ernment should  be  imposed  upon  Ulster.  He  con- 
tinued : 

Ireland  is  a  country  so  circumstanced  that  this 
bill  proposes  to  create  two  Legislatures,  two  or  per- 
haps three  executives,  two  judicatures,  tvv'o  ex- 
chequers, two  consolidated  funds,  and  potentially,  at 
any  rate,  two  systems  of  taxation.  On  the  face  of 
it  that  is  a  costly  and  cumbrous  duplication  and  mul- 
tiplication of  institutions  and  offices.  From  the 
mere  point  of  view  of  administrative  efficiency  and 
economy,  particularly  in  times  like  these,  there  is 
nothing  whatever  to  be  said  for  such  a  proposal. 
It  can  only  be  justified  as  a  concession,  taking  it 
by  considerations  of  high  policy,  to  a  clamorous 
national  demand.  Is  there  such  a  demand?  One 
thing  is  certain  about  this  bill,  which  cannot  be 
disputed  by  anybody — no  section  of  Irish  opinion 
151 


152  THE   HOME   RULE   BILL 

asks  for  it,  and  no  Irish  sentiment — at  present  so 
sore  and  mutinous — will  be  soothed  or  appeased  by 
it.  No  one  in  Ireland  wants  two  Parliaments.  No 
one  in  Ireland  wants  to  see  the  judicial  bench  cut 
in  half.  No  one  in  Ireland  desires  the  establish- 
ment in  the  administrative  sphere  of  two  Dublin 
Castles,  however,  reformed,  expurgated  and  regen- 
erated, in  place  of  one.  Every  previous  Home  Rule 
bill  has  received  the  support  if  not  of  four-fifths 
at  least  of  three-quarters  of  the  elected  representa- 
tives of  Ireland  in  this  House.  It  is  doubtful  when 
we  come  to  a  division  on  the  second  reading  if  one 
single  Irish  member  of  any  section  will  support  it. 
This  is  the  first  experiment  in  the  domestic  or  inter- 
imperial  sphere  of  the  great  principle  of  self-deter- 
mination. [Cheers  and  laughter.]  That  is  the  bill 
on  its  merits — a  large,  cumbrous,  costly,  unworkable 
scheme,  which  is  not  demanded  or  supported  by  any 
section  of  opinion  in  the  country  to  which  it  is  to 
be  applied. 

To  call  this  a  Home  Rule  bill,  said  Mr.  Asquith, 
was  a  misnomer.    He  continued: 

Home  Rule  has  always  meant  to  us  Home  Rulers 
the  establishment  in  Ireland  of  a  single  Legislature 
with  an  Executive  responsible  to  and  dependent 
upon  it.  We  have  agreed  from  the  first  that  you 
cannot  carry  out  that  which  is  the  dominant  pur- 
pose, the  governing  principle,  the  aim  and  goal  of 
our  policy,  without  providing,  on  the  one  hand,  ade- 
quate safeguards  for  the  maintenance  of  imperial 
supremacy,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  reasonable  pro- 
tection for  the  rights  and  possible  dangers  of  Irish 


THE  HOME  RULE  BILL  153 

minorities.  But  this  present  bill  wholly  discards  the 
principle  of  all  previous  Home  Rule  bills.  It  pro- 
poses to  create  two  co-ordinate  and  mutually  inde- 
pendent Legislatures  and  Executives. 

He  asserted  that  the  proposed  Irish  Council  was 
"a  fleshless  and  bloodless  skeleton"  without  power, 
except  when  given  power  by  identic  acts  of  the  two 
Parliaments.  He  asserted  that  there  was  no  hope 
of  the  two  Parliaments  ever  uniting.  He  quoted 
from  an  address  of  a  leading  Ulster  member,  Cap- 
tain Craig  of  Antrim: 

There  has  been  a  great  deal  said  in  this  debate 
about  the  time  when  there  is  to  be  union  between  us. 
It  has  been  said  that  this  bill  lends  itself  to  the 
union  of  Ulster  and  the  rest  of  Ireland.  It  would 
not  be  fair  to  the  House  if  I  lent  the  slightest  hope 
of  that  union  arising  within  the  lifetime  of  any 
man  in  this  House.  I  do  not  believe  it  for  a 
moment. 

Mr.  Asquith  added: 

Then  he  goes  on  to  explain  this  is  going  to  be 
frustrated  by  the  machinery  provided  by  the  bill 
itself:  "If  we  had,"  he  says,  "the  nine  counties," 
that  is  to  say,  a  Northern  Parliament  representing 
the  whole  province  of  Ulster,  the  nine  counties  Par- 
liament, "with  sixty-four  members,  the  Unionist 
majority  would  be  about  three  or  four.  The  three 
excluded  counties  contain  some  70,000  Unionists 
and  261,000  Sinn  Feiners  and  Nationalists,  and  the 
addition  of  that  large  block  of  Sinn  Feiners  and 


1 54  THE  HOME  RULE  BILL 

Nationalists  would  reduce  our  majority  to  such  a 
level  that  no  sane  man  would  undertake  to  carry 
on  a  Parliament  with  it." 

So  you  have  got  to  reduce  Ulster  for  this  pur- 
pose from  nine  counties  to  six.  Here  yon  are 
creating  a  Northern  Parliament  with  co-ordinating 
powers  with  a  Southern  Parliament,  and  in  the  con- 
stitution of  the  Northern  Parliament  you  except 
three  of  the  nine  Ulster  counties,  with  the  result 
which  the  honourable  and  gallant  member  gloats 
over — that  they  will  always  have  a  majority  and  be 
able  to  defeat,  permanently,  every  move  for  the  at- 
tainment of  a  single  Parliament  for  Ireland. 

He  advocated  giving  the  Irish  Legislature  the 
power  of  imposing  customs,  excise  and  income  tax. 
He  criticised  the  bill  because  it  gave  no  protection 
to  the  religious  minorities  in  either  Parliament,  and 
favoured  county  option  for  the  Province  of  Ulster. 
He  also  advocated  as  a  substitute  a  suggestion  made 
by  Sir  Horace  Plunkett — the  summoning  of  a  Con- 
stituent Assembly  with  instructions  to  set  up  an 
Irish  Legislative  Assembly  and  leave  to  the  Con- 
stituent Assembly  the  responsibility  for  working  out 
the  scheme. 


APPENDIX  D 

MR.  BONAR  LAW'S  REPLY  TO  ASQUITH 

Andrew  Bonar  Law,  spokesman  for  the  Govern- 
ment, in  replying  to  Mr.  Asquith,  twitted  him  with 
his  failure  to  accomplish  anything  when  he  was 
Premier.  Accusing  him  of  a  short  memory,  since 
the  Asquith  Government  in  1916  had  tried  to  carry 
out  proposals  almost  identical  with  those  of  the 
Lloyd  George  Government,  Bonar  Law  went  on  to 
say  that  the  following  were  the  only  possible  alterna- 
tives in  dealing  with  the  situation: 

First,  repeal  the  Home  Rule  Act. 

Second,  Dominion  Home  Rule. 

Third,  to  give  self-determination  to  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  Irish  people;  that  is,  to  create  an  Irish 
Republic. 

Fourth,  to  give  to  Ireland  the  largest  measure  of 
home  rule  compatible  with  national  security  and 
pledges  given.     That  is  the  object  of  the  bill. 

It  is  obvious  [he  continued]  that  repeal  is  not  pos- 
sible to  the  present  Government.  I  believe  in  the 
value  to  the  nation  of  the  continuance  of  the  Coali- 
tion Government.  If  the  policy  of  repeal  were  the 
155 


156  THE  HOME  RULE  BILL 

right  policy  I  should  say  at  once  the  Coalition  should 
come  to  an  end. 

Another  alternati\'e  is  Dominion  Home  Rule. 
Mr.  Asquith  used  that  phrase,  but  did  he  mean  it? 
The  very  words  he  used  showed  that  he  did  not 
mean  it.  What  is  the  essence  of  Dominion  Home 
Rule  ?  The  essence  is  that  the  Dominions  have  con- 
trol of  their  whole  destinies,  of  their  fighting  forces, 
and  of  the  amount  that  they  contribute  to  the  gen- 
eral support  and  security  of  the  Empire.  Does  the 
right  honourable  gentleman  propose  to  give  these 
things  to  Ireland?  Not  at  all;  he  was  going  to  re- 
serve the  armed  forces  and  state  the  contribution 
which  should  be  made.  There  is  not  a  man  in  the 
House,  least  of  all  the  right  honourable  gentleman, 
who  would  not  admit  that  the  connection  of  Do- 
minions and  the  Empire  depends  upon  the  Domin- 
ions, li  Australia,  Canada,  or  New  Zealand  chose 
to  say,  "We  will  not  remain  part  of  the  British  Em- 
pire," we  would  not  force  them.  Dominion  Home 
Rule  means  the  right  to  decide  their  own  destinies. 

The  right  honourable  gentleman  says  that  this  is 
dc*randed  by  the  legal  representatives  of  the  Irish 
people.  They  are  still  as  much  legal  representatives 
when  they  are  Sinn  Feiners,  and  to  say  he  is  pre- 
pared to  give  Dominion  Home  Rule  means  nothing 
less  than  that  he  is  prepared  to  give  an  Irish  Repub- 
lic. My  right  honourable  friend  shakes  his  head,  but 
that  is  no  answer. 

Danger  in  Separation 

The  speaker  challenged  the  labour  members  to  de- 
clare they  favoured  an  Irish  Republic.     There  was 


THE   HOME  RULE   BILL  157 

no  answer  to  his  challenge.    He  then  continued  as 
follows : 

It  is  one  of  the  most  childish  mistakes  to  assume 
that  because  Ireland  is  separated  from  us  by  a  sheet 
of  water  she  is  in  any  degree  less  essential  to  the 
national  security  than  if  she  were  part  of  this  island. 
All  the  experience  of  the  growth  of  nationalities 
shows  that  water  connections  have  as  much  to  do 
with  the  grouping  of  peoples  as  land  connections. 
That  is  the  cause  of  the  difficulty  in  settling  the 
Adriatic  question  to-day.  Though  this  water  is  be- 
tween us  it  is  no  less  dangerous  to  have  Ireland  out 
of  the  orbit  of  our  national  defence.  The  policy 
of  separation  has  never  been  adopted  under  such 
circumstances  by  any  nation  in  the  history  of  the 
world  except  after  defeat  and  under  compulsion. 
It  was  against  such  a  policy  that  a  most  bloody  war 
was  waged  in  the  United  States.  Let  us  see  clearly 
where  we  are  going.  Those  who  talk  loosely  of 
self-determination  should  see  exactly  where  it  leads, 
and  ask  themselves  whether  they  are  prepared  to 
follow  that  road  to  the  end. 

The  speaker  argued  that  the  proposed  bill  was 
the  nearest  to  self-government  that  national  security 
would  permit.  He  said  that  the  Ulster  Parliament 
was  made  up  of  the  six  counties  instead  of  the  nine, 
in  order  to  make  ultimate  union  possible.  He  then 
added : 

We  wish  to  keep  on  the  best  terms  with  America. 
We  shall  do  what  is  right,  and  trust  to  that  win- 


158  THE  HOME  RULE  BILL 

ning  respect.  But  it  is  not  merely  America,  it  is 
our  self-governing  dominions.  I  have  hardly  met 
an  Australian  or  Canadian  who  has  not  said,  "Why 
don't  you  give  them  home  rule?"  To  all  of  these 
we  say  that  by  this  bill  England  ceases  to  interfere, 
and  that  Ireland  has  the  power  to  govern  in  her 
own  hands  the  moment  Irishmen  can  agree  among 
themselves. 

Why  have  we  taken  the  six  counties?  In  the 
first  place  in  the  election  manifesto  of  m.y  right 
honourable  friend  and  myself  we  stated  that  we  in- 
tended to  deal  with  the  matter  on  the  basis  of  the 
six  counties.  In  1916  there  was  a  real  attempt  to 
get  a  settlement  for  the  first  time  on  the  basis  of 
recognizing  facts  as  they  were.  The  leaders  of  the 
Ulster  Party  and  the  leaders  of  the  Nationalist 
Party  met.  They  decided  to  try  to  carry  the  six 
counties.  If  at  the  time  when  there  was  a  real 
desire  for  settlement  both  sections  thought  that  a 
fair  settlement,  I  say  that  this  House  has  a  right 
to  regard  it  now  as  a  fair  settlement.  My  right 
honourable  friend  quoted  Captain  Craig  as  saying 
that  in  his  belief  there  would  be  no  union  in  the 
lifetime  of  any  of  us.  How  can  any  one  forecast 
the  future?  If  we  had  kept  the  whole  of  Ulster 
what  would  have  been  the  position?  We  would 
have  been  told  by  every  Nationalist  on  the  opposite 
benches  that  the  three  Ulster  counties  were  identical 
in  sympathy  with  the  rest  of  Ireland,  and  that  it 
was  monstrous  to  exclude  them  from  Southern 
Ireland.  *  *  * 

If  the  whole  of  Ulster  had  been  in  the  Parliament 
the  other  side  would  have  tried  to  keep  as  the 
whole  issue  this  arrangement  with  the  six  counties. 


THE  HOME  RULE  BILL  159 

By  this  arrangement  the  six  counties  will  fall  into 
normal  lines.  If  you  free  these  six  counties  you 
will  free  them  from  this  old  quarrel  and  they  will 
take  new  directions.  I  have  seen  something  of 
those  sir  counties  and  I  think  they  are  the  most 
democratic  population  in  these  islands. 

My  right  honourable  friend  said  the  Central  Council 
is  purely  humbug.  It  is  exactly  the  amount  of 
humbug  that  the  honourable  member  and  his  friends 
choose  to  make  it.  It  gives  machinery  for  the 
closest  co-operation  betv/een  the  two  Parliaments  if 
they  agree.  If  they  do  not  agree  what  is  the  sense 
of  talking  about  giving  to  Ireland  control  of  their 
own  affairs?  *  *  * 


How  Bill  Would  Work 

The  moment  this  bill  becomes  law  these  tv/o 
Parliaments  are  constituted.  I  think  the  Plouse  has 
a  right  to  know  what  will  happen  if  the  contingency 
suggested  by  Mr.  O'Connor  really  happens,  and  if 
the  Sinn  Feiners  were  in  a  majority  and  refused 
to  work  our  Parliament.  What  would  happen  would 
be  that  instantly  v/e  should  revert  to  the  present 
position  and  it  must  be  made  perfectly  plain  that 
until  the  Parhament  is  properly  constituted  and  has 
taken  the  oath  the  act  cannot  come  into  operation. 

Mr.  Devlin — Does  that  apply  to  Ulster? 

Mr.    Bonar   Law — Yes. 

Mr.  Devlin — If  the  rest  of  Ireland  refuses  to 
recognize  this  Parliament,  would  the  Parliament  be 
put  into  operation  in  Ulster? 

Mr.  Bonar  Law — Most  certainly,  and  may  I  point 
out  to  the  House  that,  in  my  view,  that  gives  good 


i6o  THE  HOME  RULE  BILL 

ground  for  hoping  that  this  will  ultimately  succeed? 
You  set  up  these  Parliaments;  the  Ulster  Parlia- 
ment, I  presume,  will  at  once  work,  the  rest  of 
Ireland  will  see  that  it  is  working  satisfactorily. 
There  will  be  before  their  eyes  the  evidence  that 
they  can  have  the  same  self-government  the  mo- 
ment they  like.  Even  suppose  that  for  the  first 
Parliament  the  Sinn  Feiners  refuse  to  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  it,  or  refuse  to  take  the  oath  of 
allegiance,  we  drop  back  to  where  we  are.  If  the 
whole  south  of  Ireland  is  composed  of  people  who 
will  have  nothing  but  a  republic,  then  no  settlement 
is  possible.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is,  as  we 
are  constantly  told,  a  large  element  among  the 
Nationalist  population  who  are  sane,  and  who  look 
at  things  with  a  real  desire  to  do  the  best  for 
Ireland,  I  do  not  believe  that  when  they  see  these 
powers  working  in  the  rest  of  Ireland  before  them 
they  will  refuse  to  accept  the  situation  and  take 
advantage  of  it. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


Date  Due 

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BOSTON  COLLEGE 
III 


3  9031   01646139  4 

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